TAT readers,

Today’s essay is in my opinion, about one of the most dangerous aspects of the Seditious Republican Party and their chums in the oligarchy, that are aggressively censoring all Americans in one way or another. Here’s the premise; our founders expected citizens and residents to be well and accurately informed as a foundational aspect of being a responsible citizen. In the entire Trump/ MAGA era, the Republican Party has been perpetually driving a stake through the heart of the very truth that those brilliant and courageous founders expected us to have access to. If we do not take the actions required to lay our boots against the backside of cowardly mainstream media, the music and entertainment industry cowards, tech and social media platforms, as well as the tsunami of foreign influence, there will be no truth left to inform us. If this continues, there will no longer be an American republic.

I’m beyond fed up with the “fake news” GOP and their sycophantic base. They are pointing a gun directly at the First Amendment, the embodiment of our most closely held constitutional rights. Law will not protect us, nor the unfulfilled promises of social media and AI purveyors claiming their only interest is “free speech.” Their commitment to free speech is as laughable as the current version of the Republican Party being the party of “family values.” As any person with sound common-sense knows, an absence of facts deprives us all of not only truth but America’s future.

To be clear, my profession of supporting and defending our national security via ethical influence, is far too complicated for one essay. Today I will present just the overview of censorship and should there be further interest, I will begin writing a short series of essays that flush out today’s overview in greater depth. I was planning on writing that series anyway for the IWI or Irregular Warfare Institute, where I am an advisor, but believe that it is more important at this critical juncture of American History to present the truth to my fellow Americans. Without the explosion of the so-called “fake news,” supported by Russia, this administration which their party has wielded as a bludgeon against every single American, there would have been no Trump-era. In order to maintain the power they have accumulated in our government, they have turned censorship into a nuclear weapon that destroys the very truth we require to make the sound decisions which sustain the republic.

Some of this essay will necessarily go down some technical and legal rabbit holes however, I will do all possible to thread the needle of understanding, by writing with understanding for all, rather than the professional community I originally was going to write for. It’s that important for our future. I’ve long written professionally and privately, that I firmly believe that immoral and adversarial influence operations were the most perilous threat to American democracy. The Republican Party in and preceding the Trump/ MAGA era, has easily proved my beliefs. Censorship in the hand of tyrants, is part of those influence operations and ground zero for the acute threat that could end 250 years of our style and system of government. President Lincoln spoke eloquently in the final words of his iconic Gettysburg Address regarding our citizen’s duty to the cause of liberty.

" that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

- The Gettysburg Address
- President Abraham Lincoln
- November 19th, 1863

What is censorship anyway?

There are so many comments in social media and our news feeds these days as uncertain as most Americans, as to what censorship means legally or operationally under our constitution and legal frameworks. Let’s clear this up, right up front. First of all, I’ll begin with a description from the esteemed ALA or American Library Association. Yes, the ALA has been a tireless warrior in support of our First Amendment, largely by fighting unconstitutional book bans. Their tireless efforts to uphold the one amendment that the current administration consistently violates, is critical to defining who we are as Americans. Here are a handful of the foundational points about censorship in America.

1. The First Amendment within our Bill of Rights

Amendment I

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

- The Bill of Rights: A Transcription
- National Archives

2. With very few and very narrow exceptions, it is illegal for the government to censor speech. The legality of censorship is oriented almost exclusively towards limiting government to interfere with our constitutionally guaranteed free speech. The First Amendment only pertains to government censorship, but there are some extremely narrow exceptions. In fact, on rare occasions, there may actually be times when censorship benefits us all regarding national security. The question that’s relevant here, is that this administration has become like the old tale about, “the boy who cried wolf,” because their noxious claims of “national emergencies” are false… every single time. This invalidates them from employing any of those narrow exceptions for their brutal agenda. The First Amendment concerns more than freedom of speech and there isn’t one word in the entire amendment that the current administration hasn’t walked on with muddy boots. They have and continue to violate everything within the First Amendment.

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   Content based Regulation
   
   "As a general matter, government may not regulate speech “because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.” 1 “It is rare that a regulation restricting speech because of its content will ever be permissible.” 2 The constitutionality of content-based regulation is determined by a compelling interest test derived from equal protection analysis: the government “must show that its regulation is necessary to serve a compelling state interest and is narrowly drawn to achieve that end.” 3 Narrow tailoring in the case of fully protected speech requires that the government “choose[ ] the least restrictive means to further the articulated interest.” 4 Application of this test ordinarily results in invalidation of the regulation.5"
   
   - Content based Regulation
   - LII, Legal Information Institute
   - Cornell Law School

   

3. I greatly appreciate ALA’s definition of censorship

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   "Censorship is the suppression of ideas and information that some individuals, groups, or government officials find objectionable or dangerous.  Would-be censors try to use the power of the state to impose their view of what is truthful and appropriate, or offensive and objectionable, on everyone else. Censors pressure public institutions, like libraries, to suppress and remove information they judge inappropriate or dangerous from public access, so that no one else has the chance to read or view the material and make up their own minds about it. The censor wants to prejudge materials for everyone.  It is no more complicated than someone saying, “Don’t let anyone read this book, or buy that magazine, or view that film, because I object to it!”
   
   - What is Censorship?
   - American Library Association

4. Under the Republican leadership in government, the unconstitutional and illegal manner in which they censor Americans, is not always overt. They employ a wide variety of tactics, strategies and partnerships outside of their official government purview to do their dirty work, therefore complicating some aspects of the legal restraints they long ago ignored. Just because they can find a legal loophole to make their actions technically “legal,” doesn’t mean they are adhering to the intent of our constitution or the spirit of the law.

   

Every single American is now being influenced in a manner that either censors what they see, read, watch or hear, or promotes the ideology of Sedition and fake-patriotism. Whoever and wherever you are, you are being manipulated and it’s really that simple. So if you’re like me and an American raised on the sanctity of our republic and the ideals it represents, you are undoubtedly deeply offended that our government tolerates and willfully deploys influence operations against us. Yes, censorship is part of influence campaigns.

Oh and by the way… not one of us that uses digital technology at home or at work, has any more secrets. Our vehicles, homes, shopping, phones, TVs and anything digital at home or where you venture outside of your home, is spying on you. That data goes to enormous data owners, like Amazon or FB for example, who then use this data to target you in order to exploit your wallet, regardless of whether you need a product or service, or not. This administration and their deplorable tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and more, know everything about our lives due to their data thefts. DOGE isn’t the only criminal though, and the data they stole, violates our Fourth Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

- Search and Seizure
- Constitution Center.org

These points above are the immovable pieces on the battlefield against GOP influence campaigns and as this essay explains, the piece regarding censorship. War is often ungracious in not providing the battlefield or “good ground” we would like. Sometimes strategy, timing and a hundred other important issues deal us a bad hand. For this reason, we must be honest with ourselves what the immovable pieces are. Now that we know some of these pieces, let’s continue discussing some of the pieces of censorship that are affecting our lives and our republic.

Digital media

In today’s America, the current administration, many major US and foreign corporate entities and those they direct to “moderate” or censor the speech of political opponents, has become pervasive, especially via their coercion of all media, their networks and parent corporations or owners. The attack on our constitutional rights and privacy is being waged aggressively around the clock, every day of every month and every year. There’s an entire strategy for this by the administration, the GOP and their foreign allies, such as Russia, China and those within their spheres of influence.

Then there are others, such as the places we all connect on social media, like LinkedIn, FB, Meta, X, Parler, Truth Social and so on. No matter how you access your online interests, your data is being collected and it has enormous value to those that have it in their grubby little paws. Like so many other AI surprises we’re all getting lately, the collection and exploitation of our personal data is one of the most dangerous and pernicious.

Let me tell you a short personal story for a moment, and those of you who’ve ever been robbed or burglarized will identity with this instantly. In my long life, on two occasions my home was burglarized. Once your home has been burglarized, there is a deep, unshakeable disgust that you’ve been horribly violated. Strangers entered your home and rifled through everything you own, no matter how personal. It doesn’t matter what they touched, because everything feels dirty, contaminated and tainted, even those items of little value to the thieves but deeply sentimental and personal to you. This is how I now feel when using digital technology due to the data collectors.

Everything we all do publicly is now collected digitally. If you take a drive and stop for gas and pay with a credit or debit card, there is a transaction record. Your purchases when you go inside for a coffee or snack, is digitized. At a minimum, your presence and purchase have been collected. The store probably has cameras and audio recording and anyone with a phone taking photos outside could be collecting images and audio, even accidently. All of that data goes to data owners. Data owners believe that they hold the keys to the kingdom and in many ways, they are right. Data is the new nuclear weapon of influence.

Data owners use that data to build digital profiles of everyone. What I mean by digital profiles is that every single piece of data collected becomes like those paint by number sets from childhood. Every morsel of data they collect on you, fills in a little piece of your identity. Collect enough pieces and you can clearly see the identity of any person. Knowing a person’s identity can then be used to increase the owner’s ability to influence you, to buy a product or service, vote a certain way or shape the way you perceive the world around you. Amazon for example uses their data to suggest products to you, remembers your purchases and even notes your dislikes. This is why those us who use Amazon’s services, receive ads and suggestions ad nauseum. Even typing in their search box for what you want, they are already picking categories of products for you to shop. You search on Amazon, and instantly, your Facebook is pitching you an add for a product, you’ve just viewed or searched.

Google vacuums the data from your searches, mail and all of their other office apps, and uses this to digitize your identity. Here’s a quick note from the influence operator world, anyone who understands your identity well, is the person or machine most capable of influencing you. Google is insatiable when it comes to your data. Now to be fair, yes AI and related data collection also has positive benefits, such as increasing search speed or at one time, enhancing your search results. At the moment though, I will no longer trust Google as far as I can throw them.

Throughout my career, I have had to employ research in order to offer military commands my best insights, support my operations and to innovate strategy, techniques and tactics for success. Much of the required research to analyze what are called, TAs or Target Audiences, is found outside of classified systems. This means what is called, “open-source” intelligence which means that you and I could see the same thing if we searched the same thing. Like my peers and colleagues, Google was the preferred or most common search engine on government systems. In the past couple of years, Google’s search engine has been hollowed out and serves only the most minor research.

Anyone who “googles” anything often, will surely have noticed how much is now missing from searches. Since I include a fair amount of history, global national security reporting and other background in my essays, I have discovered just how little is now available from using their search engine. It’s not just me either. Even prominent historical references either are no longer available or only have one reference that tells the story only one way. Understanding history well, requires seeing situations from a variety of perspectives, if you wish to actually understand them.

Now that I have allowed my security clearance to expire, I, like you, now only have access to publicly available information. My writing and most of our lives, depend on access to credible information. This is another problem with Google searches, a search places an AI section at the top of the page and some of the sources their AI provides, are nowhere near credible. How can Americans make sense of our ever-more complicated world without credible sources. Google is censoring us and their motives are to me suspect, other than their greed and fight for power with other big data owners.

Facebook, is infamous for their digital treachery. Their list of losses in court have been staggering. It would take a book to sort through all of them so I’ll just offer a handful of the most prominent.

• Facebook allowed a private tech firm named Cambridge Analytica, owned by Republican super-donor, Robert Mercer to illegally harvest the data of Facebook users for the purpose of personalizing pro-Trump messaging to American voters during the 2016 election period. The data also ended up in the hands of a Russian digital researcher. They settled the case for 725 million to avoid a public trial.

• Facebook was found responsible for exacerbating a 2017 genocide in Myanmar, formerly Burma. They didn’t even follow their own standards and did nothing to mitigate the genocide largely caused by their willingness to support a genocidal military junta.

  

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  "Facebook contributed to a genocide in Myanmar. Scholars, reporters, and United Nations investigators agree that the social media giant played a role in an explosion of ethnic conflict in 2017 that led to the death and displacement of hundreds of thousands Rohingya Muslims in Northern Myanmar.
  
  Riding a wave of liberalization, Facebook entered the country and quickly dominated online spaces, with early the entire internet-connected population of the country using Facebook products. Challenges related to culture and technology meant that the conversations received little moderation. Facebook feeds quickly became populated with hateful speech, including misinformation seeded by the ruling military authority. As a result, Facebook played a critical role in the explosion of violence, especially during the 2017 genocide."
  
  "Facebook’s entry into Myanmar provides a vivid picture of how corporations behave in an absolute lacuna of legal accountability. Facebook knowingly sold a product that tended to exacerbate political divisions and spread misinformation, and did so in a market with significant pre-existing risk factors. It adopted no mechanisms to mitigate those harms, failing even to enforce its own voluntary standards. In so doing, Facebook helped facilitate a genocide."
  
  - Facebook and Genocide: How Facebook contributed to genocide in Myanmar and why it will not be held accountable
  - Daniel Zaleznik
  - Systemic Justice.org

• Just recently, a New Mexico court found META/ FB guilty in a landmark case that will cost them $375 million dollars. They were found guilty of failing to protect children and of not removing clear evidence

  

"SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A New Mexico jury found Tuesday that social media conglomerate Meta is harmful to children's mental health and in violation of state consumer protection law.

The landmark decision comes after a nearly seven-week trial. Jurors sided with state prosecutors who argued that Meta — which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp — prioritized profits over safety. The jury determined Meta violated parts of the state's Unfair Practices Act on accusations the company hid what it knew about about the dangers of child sexual exploitation on its platforms and impacts on child mental health."

- Jury finds Meta's platforms are harmful to children in 1st wave of social media addiction lawsuits
- PBS
- By Morgan Lee of the Associated Press

Professionally speaking, I find Facebook a cesspool of threats, both digital and as a premier host for scam artists. Just this past week, the iconic Lloyd’s of London, reported that a full two-thirds of their fraud cases, originated on META platforms. META is a parent company of Facebook.

As someone recognized in my field, I know fake accounts, bots, propaganda and so much more regarding threats to Americans via influence. I have repeatedly reported fake accounts on Facebook for ages. Not once have they removed the accounts. They allow pro-MAGA bots to infect most high-traffic threads. Their censorship is in how they moderate anti-MAGA users. They are slightly more subtle than LinkedIn, who not only moderates accounts but allows outside companies to do the dirty work for them.

To be fully transparent, I’ve been at war with LinkedIn for over a decade. The war began as I was retiring from the army and began using social media. Over a few months, I connected with a handful of national security professionals and fought the army of Russian and MAGA trolls spewing the conspiracy theories we’ve all come to know regarding the 2016 election. LinkedIn’s platform became so problematic for US national security that the GOAT of US national security and intelligence reporting, Jeff Stein, then of Newsweek, wrote a full-length expose’ about our efforts titled, “How Russia Is Using LinkedIn as a Tool of War Against Its U.S. Enemies.

Today, LinkedIn is still moderating or allowing external companies to moderate. Again, here is a personal story to make my point. When I first subscribed, I acquired a significant following where my posts would typically range between a couple of thousand views and up to 20 plus thousand. Like here, on Substack I wrote the truth about what was occurring while that LinkedIn was a maze of foreign and MAGA influence. Like the 2016 debacle with the Russian and MAGA trolls, my writing is now fully moderated by a Canadian company called ICUC. They are in turn owned by Dentsu Advertising Services, headquartered in London. Not the US, Canada nor the UK will rein in these corporate hitmen like ICUC who specialize in censorship, via AI. Now corporate oligarchs don’t even do their own dirty work, they outsource to companies like ICUC and this problem is far larger than just an isolated critic or two. This is about protecting their brand from the truth.

Their clients are the who’s who of corporate power and includes companies like Sony, Chevron, Starbucks, Tim Horton’s, Google, etc. These companies pay ICUC to “manage” their online presence. This includes moderation of their critics. Although this is corporate censorship and not illegal, many of the CEOs, owners and board of directors of these behemoth corporations, also fund the current administration’s agendas and their party. They only care about their bottom line, no matter who gets hurt. Such is the state of today’s corporate world. Selling out democracy and its citizens, is the furthest thing from moral.

The last section of this limited overview must focus briefing on the coercion of the media industry by the administration. Their specialty is extortion or buying off potential opponents who in turn, sell all of us out. Brendan Carr, Trump’s FCC, Federal Communications Commission has made quite a name for himself by threatening to cancel broadcast licenses for networks in order to stop them from being too critical of the administration’s immoral and illegal agendas. Their Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert events did not pan out well for Carr and the administration, but to this day, they continue operate with timidity when it comes to reporting the truth about Trump and the GOP. In many cases, they won’t even report a story at all, let alone with timidity. In effect, they have been censored.

We’ve all followed the CBS debacle of them bending low enough to kiss the hindquarters of the president. They put Bari Wiess at the head of the news division, destroyed 60 Minutes and all to curry favor with a man who has no loyalty, except apparently to Putin. There will certainly and justifiably be antitrust lawsuits over this one and in fact, it was we the consumers who have filed the first one. That lawsuit is only the beginning for the merger as that several states are lining up to pursue more antitrust lawsuits opposing the merger. Wiess has been credibly accused of demanding dishonest, pro-Trump reporting at 60 Minutes. Yes, you guessed it, more censorship.

Summary

Phew, this was a long one. If you’ve made this far, I’m beyond grateful. Even at this length, we’ve only scratched the surface regarding types of censorship. The bottom-line today is that while we are busy resisting tyranny, the odds are stacked against us and to a large extent, illegally by the Trump/ MAGA regime. We are no longer engaged in a typical back and forth political battle between political parties. We are a diverse mixture of political interests all pulling for one thing, the restoration of a functioning republic where we retain our rights, are not robbed commercially or by a greedy GOP-run government, that is now a far-right extremist movement, rather than a political party. They are funded by we-the-people’s hard-earned taxes dollars and self-serving billionaires that don’t care at all about our system of government.

As we’ve seen throughout this essay, censorship by the government whether first-hand or via proxies, denies us the truth we require and deserve as US citizens. From the White House and the Republican-led Congress, we only get lies and stonewalling. Helluva a way to run a republic. Media is too afraid to challenge the administration and either writes fluff when discussing the Trump crowd or ignores it altogether. The music industry that we depended on in the late sixties and early seventies for protest soundtracks and anthems, are absent from the resistance, with few exceptions.

Their studios are inflicted with the same cowardice as the movie and TV industry. Those old protest songs sustained protests, the movement and are remembered and still played today. Since the majority of studios are in their own self-imposed “witness protection program,” maybe we can repurpose those classics. We need our own powerful resistance soundtrack that inspires and carries our fight on its shoulders. If there are any takers out there, please join us. We’ll sing and march our hearts out for this all-important cause. Even this administration cannot censor the music in our hearts.

The Republicans are wielding powerful weapons of influence to rally their base and suppress ours, most often by censorship directly or via hired thugs like ICUC and Dentsu. The odds are somewhat against us, but we have a secret weapon that the opposition doesn’t. We’re fighting for something real and tangible for ourselves and the generations that follow. The GOP is running on the fumes of conspiracy theories while that their dear leader is losing support by the day. They do not live in the same reality as we do and therefore have lost their moral spine, while that ours has stiffened. Our resilience trumps their lagging enthusiasm for being abused by the person they were conned into believing in.

In military-speak, we have what is called the “will to fight,” a psychological advantage, and we have the numbers to go with the will. We will have to work both harder and smarter, while that we have little to no control over the government that is attempting to steal our future. America has always loved the underdog. It’s part of our identity and it will carry us through in November, regardless of what the spineless Republican Party throws and their oligarchs throw at us. They won’t play fair, or obey the law. We must accept that reality and overcome these obstacles anyway. Morality, numbers and the constitution are on our side. The American people have yet to fail to protect our republic for a quarter of a millennia. We’re not about to start losing now.

My very best for everyone’s weekend, and onward to victory.

Paul

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TAT readers,

If we are to recover a say in the US government, we must see the influence battlefield as it is, not as we’d prefer it. Only then can we plot and execute a successful strategy to begin the accountability due every sitting Republican in our congress. Electoral wins for the resistance have become enormously more challenging due to a long list of Republican tactics, laws and government control. Radical, mid-census gerrymandering, new unconstitutional laws shoved down citizen’s throats in red-states, our extreme right-wing activist SCOTUS, executive branch thuggery at DHS, the FBI and countless local police departments around the nation, a virtual absence of respect for law from the DOJ, censorship etc. etc. etc. are the hallmarks of fascist regimes.

As a Texan, I’ve long been aware that Republican Politics, is a blood- sport. This coming November, we’re all going to experience a historic moment in our extraordinary history that puts our patriotism to the ultimate test, stopping a fascist Republican regime that has all the advantages. Every moment of the current administration has been dedicated to one thing and one thing only, to fully control the US government beyond challenge. It’s all there in Project 2025, published ages before the 2024 election, and for all to see. I believe the American people are too bright to continue buying the GOP’s road apples (midwestern for horse manure), but will that be enough in November? Now, it’s up to all of us true American patriots to put a hard-stop to the overthrow of our republic. If we are to succeed, we must have a strategy or we risk losing the opportunity we have in November.

What follows is my professional analysis of the most critical vulnerabilities within the resistance effort, all of which could be easily rectified if we had leadership. As I have written often, there is no DNC in the game, so I will ignore any potential value they may have, simply because no one has any idea whether they will respond, or not. This raises one more note to regarding this essay. I have written several essays regarding strategy, vulnerabilities and GOP weaknesses, ever since I wrote the Democratic Party’s autopsy just days after the 2024 election. I will not repeat most of what is in those essays but will include links and ideas related to those essays, where I feel they may assist the reader.

Military strategy and planning is not something that can be well explained in an essay, however I can offer you a few uncomplicated insights that should be of value to everyone that is willing to stand up against tyranny. The most valuable insights are about focusing on the GOP’s vulnerabilities and our own. The GOP deficits are to be exploited (attacked) with any and all tactics, while that we protect against them doing the same to us. Our vulnerabilities may seem insurmountable at the moment, but this is far from true. After today’s essay, you will see that our vulnerabilities can be corrected while that the GOP’s are systemic and not fixable at all before the midterms. We have a five month head start if we get busy protecting our vulnerabilities now. We’ll need it because again, the DNC should have begun campaigning for the midterms a year and a half ago. No sense as they say, “in beating a dead horse.”

Strategy development requires as a first step, clearly defining the problem and doing so as succinctly as possible. All army recruits learn something called “land navigation.” It’s a test that challenges you to be able to read a military map, understand topography and be able to chart a course to your intended destination. For many, this is quite challenging but most can learn proficiency by listening and learning. The old adage when plotting a course on your land nav map, is that if you begin your plotted course, even a half a compass degree off, you will be very far off course the further you go. Compass headings radiate outwards like spokes on a bike tire, and the further out they go, the further each point is from the points on either side. This is why we begin our anti-fascist strategy with the clearest and most succinct definition of the problem. We want to hit the target as perfectly as possible.

My definition of the threat from the GOP, is below and despite its dystopian implications, is extremely accurate based on years of observing and researching the GOP’s and related behaviors. As the inimitable Maya Angelou so eloquently warned us, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

My definition of the problem goes something like this; 

“Today’s Republican Party enables the administration, global authoritarians and oligarchs to undermine and dismantle our democracy by wielding the power given to them by, we-the-people, against us. Their purpose is straightforward; unconstrained power for only a handful of men and their merry band of oligarchs. The future they intend for all of us is, a modern form of “serfdom.”

- Cobaugh
- 2026

There are four primary vulnerabilities for the resistance. Of course, nothing stands alone and in this case, each of these primary four have dozens of issues associated with them. This essay is not an attempt to turn it into a book, and so will only address the four most dangerous vulnerabilities. These are also the ones that should they be addressed, could pay off handsomely come November.

1. Outrage isn’t enough. What the hell are we fighting for? We must have a flexible and evolving narrative of what we are fighting for, not a laundry list of outrages.

2. Stop scampering from daily outrage to the next one tomorrow.

   1. Focus on three or four main issues that are not necessarily perceived as progressive issues, every hour of every day around the clock.

      1. The four I recommend at this point in time are;

         1. Inflation

         2. The war with Iran

         3. Epstein, Epstein and more Epstein

         4. Immigration cruelty and lawlessness

3. Take the fight directly to every Republican congressman or Senator’s home district.

4. Turn out the apathetic voters

Now let’s go through the list above. I’ll try and keep the discussion tight and focused. After all, it is the weekend and no one wants to read an entire book with their morning coffee or evening beverage.

Part I: Outrage isn’t enough. What the hell are we fighting for? We must have a flexible and evolving narrative of what we are fighting for, not a laundry list of outrages.

Narratives matter more than all of the propaganda in the entire world. Okay, here’s the most succinct understanding of narrative for the purpose of influencing people.

Despite the tendency of most to talk about narrative as a story, this is not accurate in my profession. Narrative, is how human beings make meaning out of everything they experience throughout their lives. All of our individual experiences are unlike those of any other human being. Everything we experience creates in lay terms, a personalized filter between our ears that converts our experiences into meaning. Narrative Warfare, my core specialty, is a battle for control of the identity of an audience. Propaganda, fake news, conspiracy theories, historical revisionism and even truth, are all weapons in the battle for our identities.

For example, someone born and raised in Boston, will nearly always, have a narrative filter that sees New York sports teams as the enemy or in kinder terms, a spirited rivalry. No amount of statistics or game replays will convince them of anything positive about NY teams. Those fans have been indoctrinated over the course of their lives to only see a sporting event in terms of enemy vs. friendly. Even identical twins grow to be unique individuals, even though they have the same DNA. From the time they are toddlers, they experience things differently and therefore, grow different identities. They may be very similar, but their uniqueness is absolute. Once people have grown into a specific identity, it often takes decades it is very difficult to dislodge. Until then, whatever their identity becomes, makes roughly 90% of their decisions subconsciously.

This is why FOX News watchers will never see, read or hear things as we do. Their identity has been built by over thirty years of conditioning them to extreme-right-wing beliefs, even though they see themselves as patriots. Nothing will change them at this point. That is the reality that we must all accept. The identity of the person we knew before FOX News, in a matter of speaking, no longer exists as we knew them prior to their FOX addiction. Barring anything traumatic, the person you knew, may never return to their original self. Instead of fighting this, just accept it and focus your energy elsewhere.

Controlling the narrative of a brainwashed audience, is like hitching a team of horses to pull a wagon. The slightest cue you give them while driving the team, will be heeded, if they are well and regularly trained. Once a person identifies with a narrative, their actions become predictable and those actions simply become muscle memory, after decades of conditioning. Those still voting Republican are brainwashed and can be predictably triggered to do or believe whatever they are told. This is why the GOP has a dishonest narrative for everything; immigration, patriotism, the constitution, the economy, etc. Those narratives are how they control their audiences. The resistance, is still yet to form their first narrative. Movements require narratives that express the meaning of their cause. We are fighting blind and are unarmed on the narrative battlefield. A good narrative becomes the glue that holds a cause together and inspires its members to action.

We must create a narrative for every issue we’re fighting and those narratives must be relatable to our overarching narrative.

Part II: Stop scampering from daily outrage to the next one tomorrow.

Listen guys, I watch social media closely. I look for trends and how others see those trends. The administration and the GOP are leading the resistance around like a little dog on a leash. They do this easily by creating a daily outrage or two. When they do, resistance folks on social media scamper from one outrage to the next, like those adorable little Minions that our children and grandchildren love so much. The only problem for us not living in cartoon world is that, if we spend all of our time scurrying from one issue to another, we don’t focus on the very serious vulnerabilities that the Republicans have perilously stumbled into. I’m not suggesting that we ignore the GOP’s cruelty, corruption and lawlessness, but we must maintain massive pressure on their vulnerabilities. That’s how we get media to hear us instead of the opposition.

The resistance needs media support and under the current conditions, most mainstream media is cowering under their desks hoping that the White House won’t threaten them again. As they hide, they remove and minimize the content that would truthfully damage this administration and the GOP. In military terms, I’m asking you to instead of scampering about, to “concentrate our forces” on a handful of the GOP’s most vulnerable issues. Concentration of forces simply means to mass your troops and resources at a vulnerability of your adversary. In the simplest of terms, by running towards every daily outrage, we are just using up our time, energy and resources in a manner that doesn’t make a big enough noise to garner the attention of the mainstream press. We need coverage and not just the reactive kind. In Narrative Warfare, “he who goes first, wins.” We are exclusively reactive and this will cost us the midterms if it continues.

Part III: Take the fight directly to every Republican congressman or Senator’s home district.

Last July, I wrote a five-part series that was also a “how-to guide to defeating the current regime. I covered this topic in-depth throughout the series and so, will not rehash those points here. Here at this embedded link you can reach the last part of the series, an overview, which also includes links to the five part series.

The reasons for taking the fight to the Republican’s home districts is pure common-sense. In a fair election, the Republicans are so deep in the polling that they would certainly lose the House of Representatives. The Senate may hold for them but it is not a certainty either. They are hiding from their constituents and their social media game is not working anywhere close to where it has been the past decade of Trumpism. For example, I often take the pulse of how they are doing from Facebook and other social media platforms. GOP representatives and Senators are avoiding any controversial posts, preferring fluff photo-ops with anyone they can find that will agree to be in their photo-op. Even then, roughly 80% of the time the comment sections are filled with powerful derision from their constituents and those who are in other districts.

So in this logic train, if the GOP elected politicians are unpopular, that is a key vulnerability. It won’t be helpful though if we don’t take advantage of that vulnerability. The logic says to hit them hard on all of their social media with comments about Epstein, the war and especially inflation. This tactic puts your comments between the congressman or woman and their constituents. It’s a way of forcing their constituents to see how deeply and pervasively they are disliked. No one wants to back a corrupt politician, especially if others can see their name and face. The longtime GOP diehards that continue to vote for Trump, will not abandon the GOP, but that leaves everyone else to weigh your comments for truth and reason. This is one way to draw independent voters to our side and off their couches. There are roughly 30% of Republican voters that will never acknowledge truth. That leaves 70% of voters that are potential allies.

Yes, when you look at your social media feeds, take a moment to leave a short negative comment that is true. At least place one of those little laughing or angry emojis on their posts. One warning though… do not make comments that reflect partisanship. “Go blue” or “blue wave” will destroy any progress you make. America is so very fed up with partisanship. This is why we should avoid at all possible the mention of anything that wreaks of left/right, Dem/ Republican or conservative vs. liberal. After all, it’s not just Democrats that are furious with the regime and their willfully dishonest supporters. The resistance should always be branded as a movement of patriotic Americans defending our style of government and the liberty it provides, not a right vs. left partisan battle.

Part IV: Turn out the apathetic voters

I won’t waste too much time on this section because I have already partially addressed this earlier. Winning in November is a numbers game. Before the radical gerrymandering war begun by a terrified Trump and Republican Party, our battle was far more promising. We must now make up for any potential losses in the gerrymandered states. This means that we must try even harder and work smarter. As mentioned, there are only roughly 30% of hardcore Republican voters. They are too brainwashed to be reached so don’t waste too much effort on them. Our vulnerabilities are apathy and an absence of a resistance narrative. Among the roughly 30-35% of committed voters within the resistance there is indeed strength, but the question remains, how do we get voters off the couch to vote for the resistance, when the majority of them are fed up with our overly corrupt political system in general? This must be figured out quickly. One thing that would be of assistance is an overarching narrative that tells voters what our agenda is.

Summary

Today’s essay intended to give everyone an overview of our current situation and offers some recommendations to capitalize on the overwhelming unpopularity of this administration. Those who ignore such opportunities will always lose to those who may be horrible but have a plan. For decades, the GOP has built a massive and powerful media machine to “sell” their nonsense. They are good at this and have the money from their selfish oligarchy to fund unlimited media blitzes. This is an obstacle although not an insurmountable one. Remember, the GOP is the minority party, even though they currently control our entire government. I cannot at this time foresee this GOP converting independents and apathetic voters. They are that unpopular. We must act now though, if we are to make any real progress before the midterms.

Professionally, I have never worked on a political campaign, but I do know influence and have written, executed and assessed my own successful campaigns in my capacity within the military and extended national security community. What I conveyed in this piece, are the basics of any campaigning, regardless of its intentions. We are under assault every single day by the Republican media monstrosity and there is almost nothing of substance of quantity coming from our side. What I’m offering here are the basics that we can all contribute to since the DNC went into the Witness Protection Program. We can do this, and for our children and grandchildren’s sake, we must.

Onward,

Paul

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I’m so sorry. I just sent out today’s essay and somehow, I accidently deleted it. Some of you may have received it but now I am trying to find a way to recover it. If I don’t, that knocking sound will be me knocking my head against the door jamb!

Dear TAT readers,

Today I want to share some historical knowledge about the Fourth of July, offering a short history lesson that explains why we resist oppression and tyranny with such righteous anger. I suspect many don’t know all of today’s historical stories. All I can say is that all of them inspire me and I hope they will do the same for all of you. As I noted in my last essay about why I refuse to celebrate the buffoonish administration’s version of this auspicious holiday, I’m a true believer in our system of government, not for partisanship, but because I believe deeply in our founding principles, mangled so heinously by the current SCOTUS and of course, the administration dismantling our republic. One of today’s stories about the fourth, seems almost mystically preordained by the very “creator,” spoken of by Jefferson in our founding declaration.

Longtime readers know that I have a deep love of history and especially regarding our founders, their courage and their brilliant progressive (for the time) ideals that populate our constitution and its later amendments. Although I have an undergrad degree in history and that I absorbed so much personal mentoring by my history and government teacher father, I don’t consider myself a true historian, so much as a well-informed and devoted student of history. Today I will share a couple of our Fourth of July stories that demonstrate how central that this date is to how we identify ourselves as Americans. I hope you will find this interesting and helpful in your resistance to the tyranny of the ruling Republican Party’s descent into fascism, autocracy, dictatorship etc. The truth is, this administration fits into many such categories, so please feel free to just insert the word of your choice.

Onward

Introduction

It would acutely disrespectful not to first acknowledge that the signing of our Declaration of Independence was arguably, the first official step in becoming the world’s longest surviving constitutional republic. That doesn’t mean that there were not other forms of democracy prior, such as Greece and Rome during ancient periods. It is no coincidence that the “father of our constitution,” and fourth president, James Madison intensely studied such forms from ancient Greece forward. He did so for primarily one reason and that was to find out both both the benefits and detriments to the idea of what was often labeled, “republicanism,” in the colonial era. First, a couple of basics about the founding of our system of governance.

Madison, recognized as an elite scholar on politics and representative government, prepared for the convention to ratify our constitution by analyzing similar representative governments from ancient Greece until the colonial era. His “Notes on Ancient and Modern Confederacies” became the written version of his analysis and can still be read today in the Library of Congress. He paid to print his analysis in a handful of remarkable little books of 39 pages, printed to fit into the pocket of his fellow delegates for the purpose of discussion and debate at the convention. His stamp more than any other scholar, is on our constitution.

"Winston Churchill once said that a man has to choose whether to nail his life to the cross of thought or the cross of action. But Churchill managed to do both and to do them well, although it is surely the case that we remember him more for his statesmanship. Like Churchill, James Madison was both a statesman and a scholar, as William Pierce of Georgia noted in his character sketch of “Mr. Maddison” at the Constitutional Convention. Americans are more aware of Madison as the fourth President of the United States than they are of his scholarly writings. I think, though, that it was in the realm of ideas rather than practical political jockeying that Madison most excelled and found his vocation. He was a good but, honestly, not great politician. While he had a
natural aptitude for legislative committee work, he was a poor orator. He was,
however, an exceptional scholar of politics and political philosophy and, in
particular, a brilliant pioneer in the study of republican government in the
modern world. The following pages are meant to acquaint readers and citizens with Madison’s discoveries and groundbreaking ideas as he engaged in a study of ancient and modern republicanism. Readers are also invited to experience with Madison the excitement he felt when he believed he had discovered the republic “for which philosophy has been searching, and humanity been sighing, from the most remote ages.”1.”

- The Mind of James Madison: The Legacy of Classical Republicanism
- Cambridge University Press, 978-1-107-02947-7 
- Colleen A. Sheehan

Without our founders’ deep legal scholarship and progressive political philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, championed by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and their esteemed colleagues in the Committee of Five, our Declaration of Independence could have foretold a very different opening act for America. Our Declaration of Independence outlines our political philosophy and our constitution, codifies the application of that philosophy.

Now, finally to the stories I promised. You will find in each, a deep and passionate love of our fledgling government, the courage to breath life into it and through the past 250 years, the willingness of all Americans, to defend it. Each story informs us of just who we are as Americans, be it the structure of the republic or in the philosophy of our founders. In our Bill of Rights, the first 10 Amendments to our constitution, and especially within the legal parameters of our First Amendment, we now have a clear lens to see how many of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms are being slaughtered by the administration and an aberrant, corrupt and shameless Supreme Court. I take a great deal of comfort in and acquire all the resilience I require to defend what over 1.3 million Americans died defending, from what we celebrate during our upcoming holiday. All I have known throughout my life, especially from my Midwestern roots, have been equally inspired… until the Trump/ MAGA GOP era. It’s up to us to set this right.

Our first celebration of the Fourth

Massachusetts, gave us our first day to celebrate, exactly two years prior to the signing of the Declaration. In Worcester, Ma, some of our earliest and most fervent patriots declared on July 4th, 1774 that their political club would establish rules regarding the arming of patriots and their readiness to fight Britain, should the relationship between the colonies and Britain come to war. This set off similar requirements across Massachusetts and not a minute too soon. Nine months later and only a little over 40 miles NW of Worcester, Britain marched on Lexington and Concord on April 19th, 1775, where the “shot heard round the world” was fired on a small bridge on the edge of Lexington at the advancing 7-8 hundred advancing British troops. The war that followed changed US and global history forever.

"On July 4, 1774, exactly two years before the United States declared independence, a patriotic club in Worcester, Massachusetts, decided that each member should have in the ready two pounds of gunpowder and twelve flints. With the Massachusetts Government Act, Parliament had just revoked key provisions of the colony’s provincial charter (like a constitution), and the people of Worcester vowed they were ready to fight to protect their political rights. Two months later 4,622 militiamen—half the adult population of this rural county—rode or walked for as many as fifty miles to gather along Worcester’s Main Street and shut down the governmental machinery at the local level. The show of force was so overwhelming that the British military commander in Boston did not dare send in his troops.

Similar events were staged in other county seats. In Plymouth, some 4,000 patriots were so excited after they closed down the court that they tried to move Plymouth Rock up to the courthouse, but that proved more difficult than unseating government officials. So ended British rule in all of Massachusetts outside of Boston. Then on October 4, 1774, twenty-one months before the Declaration of Independence, the people of Worcester said it was time to start a new government from scratch. The revolution had begun."

- The War for Independence
- Gilder Lehrman Institute (GLI) of American History
- by Ray Raphael

The near mystical story of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

Adams and Jefferson had been at the core of our fight for independence from the very beginning of the colonies’ fervor for independence. Both were deeply educated in the classics and the law, men of note within their own circles and ardently convinced that we had reached the point that independence from Britain was the only way forward for the colonies. Having met in the Continental Congress in 1775, they became fast friends and co-conspirators in every aspect of the soon to occur war with Britain. In most reading, it is understood that Adams was the one who selected Jefferson to be the primary drafter of the Declaration of Independence.

They had experienced every bit of our pursuit of independence together, whether at home or during the long times they spent abroad as US Ambassadors to England and France. Post war, Washington served two terms as our first president with Adams following him for one term until the onset of the election of 1800. It is often termed the “dirtiest election” in US history. Adams and Jefferson battled for the White House for a second time. Jefferson won the election but the damage was done. They lost each other as best friends over the vitriol in the campaign and over political appointments made by Adams before leaving office. They would not speak for another 12 years.

Another prominent founder, Dr. Benjamin Rush and a friend to both Adams and Jefferson, felt that after Jefferson left office after a second term, that it had been far too long for these dear friends who’d traveled the long and arduous road to independence together, to no longer speak or write. It took the good Doctor well over a year to manage a rekindling of their dearly missed and mourned correspondence. That correspondence reignited the deep and abiding friendship they’d shared through thick and thin. They would go on to correspond regularly until the day they died, and this is the pseudo mystical part. They both died within hours of each other on the Fourth of July, 1826, exactly fifty years to the day, since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

"The news of Adams’s death reached Boston by the end of the day. The Columbian Centinel (Boston, MA) was aligned with Federalist sentiment in the Federalist Era and used mourning bars, large dark lines to signify mourning for former president Adams in its July 8, 1826 edition. Mourning bars have been used by newspaper publishers as early as the 17th century to communicate to readers that someone has died. According to newspaper reports, Adams’s last words were, “Jefferson still lives.” In the course of a few days, news of Jefferson’s death arrived from Virginia and the next issue of the Columbian Sentinel included the headline, “Another GREAT MAN is No More! and our columns again are shrowed in respectful mourning.”

- Deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on July 4th
- Library of Congress
- Amber Paranick
- July 6th, 2022

President James Monroe follows Adams and Jefferson, dying on July 4th, 1831

Three of our founders who became president died on the fourth of July. President Monroe, now 73 and long reported ill, passed away at his son-in-law’s home in NYC, five years to the day after Adams and Jefferson.

Finally, the miracle of July 4th, 1863

It was the middle of our Civil War, things had been going poorly for the Union Army and Robert E. Lee had again ventured north of the Mason-Dixon line again and were rummaging through southeastern Pennsylvania for supplies, harassing Union political activities and looking to defeat the Army of the Potomac in a large, decisive battle. Both armies met at Gettysburg and from July 1st through July 4th were engaged in the largest battle of the war. President Lincoln, deeply concerned over Union leadership had already fired four commanding generals before handing command to Meade, three days before Gettysburg. As the news began filtering into Washington about the battle, Lincoln sat in the Telegraph Office along with senior staff and some cabinet members, hoping against previous experiences, that they would finally achieve a decisive major victory over Confederate forces, which would have been a first for the Union at this stage of the war.

Casualties were mounting, he had deep anxiety regarding his senior military leadership and as if things couldn’t get worse, the First Lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, was involved in a carriage accident the second day of the battle. The carriage she had been riding in had been sabotaged and was seen as an assassination attempt on the President, who’d been in the carriage earlier. Lincoln suffered his whole life from depression and the way the war was going, was concerned that Gettysburg would fail to give him the decisive win over Robert E. Lee he needed militarily and politically. If only he could have known that by the end of the 4th of July, his luck would reverse itself in an extraordinary way.

By the end of the day promising news was beginning to trickle in over the telegraph wires and hinting at a Union victory. By the morning of the 4th, he knew for sure that he finally had his big, decisive win over Lee. As it turns out, this wasn’t the only big news of the day. Grant, who Lincoln would make the commander of all Union Forces in a few more weeks, added another major victory at Vicksburg on the Mississippi river. July fourth, 1863 would be the turning point of the war. Despite another nearly two years of war, the Southern war effort had peaked and would never recover as a peer threat to Union forces.

Okay, that’s enough history for one essay and unless you’re as passionate about it as I am, it may feel a bit like an old history class from high school or undergrad studies. For me, it is not the names and dates but the people in our history that inspires me. Like our founders, we live in dangerous times. To win our freedom, we took on an oppressive king, much as we must do now with the current administration and their corrupt and anti-American political party. During the Civil War, we fought the Confederacy who espoused very similar ideology to what today’s Republicans spew. White Christian Nationalism, the oligarchy of the cotton and slave trade and who could see the Civil War as anything but political violence against our republic. MAGA is nothing new. It’s the same ole’ racism, greed and political violence we saw during the Civil War. The only difference today is that it is all of us that are intended to become slaves to modern oligarchy.

As I wrote last week regarding Trump’s obscene America 250 party, I will not celebrate the treasonous Republican way. I will celebrate those who forged a powerful nation, originally intended to further the liberty and rights of the masses. I will honor the men and women who had not only the vision, but the courage to breathe life into our fledgling nation, built on the premise of honoring everyone’s “inalienable human rights.” Words can be magical and when I read our history, I may mourn our historical errors like slavery and the genocide of our indigenous tribes but, will hold that pain in one hand while weighing what we’ve contributed to the world in the other.

This administration and the GOP have similar intentions for us as the historical pain I hold in one hand. That is not the end of the story though. From the very beginning, the power has been in the hands of we-the-people and there is far more good in America than bad. America can “walk and chew gum at the same time though.” We can address our past errors in one hand while reforging the American dream with the other.

Publius Redux

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Dear TAT readers,

The subject of today’s short essay has been weighing on my mind for months. Until we vanquish this corrupt and treasonous administration, restore rule of law, honor the constitution and recover our rights, there is nothing to celebrate. Yes, it was very difficult to write those first two sentences. I and a couple hundred million Americans are what in my youth, were called true patriots, left, right or otherwise. We are the resistance. Our constitutional republic, born of elite, progressive values (for the time) has been hijacked by an egomaniac, oligarchy, a bought and paid for SCOTUS, all of which are enabled by a spineless and corrupt Republican Party in the Trump era.

Today’s GOP has taken America so far from our founding values, as to make our formerly esteemed American democracy, into nothing more than a blurb in world history books, or at least until the GOP rewrites them too. Mom was a lifelong Republican and Dad the same type of Democrat. They both voted across party lines throughout my life, when facts and wisdom told them to. Dad began his career teaching history and government and had a large library of academic material at home in his office. I sat by those books looking at pictures until I could read. Thus began an insatiable life of fascination with our brilliant founders, their expansively progressive ideas and their heroic courage breathing life into a nation unlike anyone had seen before. My parents and our founders are now rolling in their graves.

America didn’t always live up to our founding values but over the arc of history, has mostly moved far closer to them. Of course, our Civil War was really the war to maintain our union and to hold those founding values higher than at any time prior. We fought and won the war to put our feet back onto the path that those extraordinary founders foresaw for us. We have fought many wars since and our nation held together, or at least until the Republican Party during the Newt Gingrich era sold their souls and chose a path of aggressive oligarchy, greed, white Christian Nationalism, and the scorched earth GOP politics of the late 70s and 80s. Today’s GOP is now a far-right extremist movement masquerading as a political party. They are now committed to dismantling the very American democracy that so many real patriots died protecting. We now live in an autocracy that our founders would have gone to war with, if they were alive today.

Corruption has no party and at times, Democratic corruption has been a wound to our democracy as well, but never remotely close to what we experience today. Today’s GOP doesn’t just want corruption, they want unbridled power and for the most immoral of purposes. Their fake patriotism rings not only hollow, but is an outright lie. Republican voters are addicted to the culture wars cultivated by the GOP and their cooperation with Russian propaganda. Because they have been conned by the combination of GOP and foreign influence operations, we can no longer reach them whether they are family, friends, co-workers or those in our communities. In the meantime, the DNC has become a hapless band of political dinosaurs, incapable of campaigning or even standing up for our national principles.

It’s as if the DNC is trying to lose the midterms. Only last week they released their long-awaited “autopsy” detailing why they lost the last election. It wasn’t just the last one either. I wrote my own DNC autopsy here on Substack, on November 12th, 2024, just one week after the disastrous election. Now, with American democracy on the executioner’s scaffolding and with only 6 months until one of the most consequential elections in US history, the DNC is absent from the electoral battlefield entirely. Most campaigns begin shortly after the last election and the DNC has been AWOL now for a year and a half. Between the gross incompetence of the DNC and the selling out of America by the GOP, my normal optimism is being gravely challenged. Where is the America I was raised to believe in?

My life and my family’s lives have been primarily one of service to the greater good. It’s simply family tradition. My uncles served during WWII, both of my veteran parents served during the Korean War and my cousins during Vietnam. Like my father before me, I enlisted in the Army at 17 in 1974, roughly a year before the infamous scenes of US troops pulling out of Saigon. When I returned to the Army 26 years later and shortly after the war on terror began, I served in Iraq, Afghanistan and a few other delicate places in the world. My son like me and my father both, enlisted in the Navy at 17 and we both served in the Middle East at the same time during one of our combat deployments. We are true believers in America. It’s not a matter of politics either. We serve because we don’t say “no” when the nation calls, whether in uniform or otherwise. We are not alone. There are millions of other American families that have answered the call too. That’s the America that I grew up believing in.

Our long-planned national celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of our Declaration of Independence from Britain is moot to me. We cannot celebrate something that no longer exists. We may still have the same name, but there is so little left of our nation and its principles, I have no idea what anyone will be celebrating. I doubt that I am not the only one that feels this way. I will dedicate our Fourth of July holiday to efforts to recover the America we all once believed in, hoping that we can resuscitate Lady Liberty. I will look for ways to impact the wallets of the shameful oligarchs who fund today’s republican party. I will also use the time to support candidates that are willing to take on every single republican in office. Not one of them is worthy of the title “congressman.” At every turn they have given the Executive Branch, every power once reserved for the Legislative Branch. I will support any effort to remove all six far-right Supreme Court Justices who daily abuse their power and privilege. My celebration will be in support of those risking everything to restore our nation.

Sure, I will miss family events but there’s work to be done. I also don’t wish to ruin family events that include those that have put party over country, vote against their own self-interests and all the while claiming to be good “conservatives.” They are not conservatives for anyone who has ever used a dictionary or encyclopedia. Those who’ve voted 2 or 3 times for Trump and his party are all… far-right extremists embracing and cheering on pedophilia, open and excessive corruption, the GOP’s predilection for ignoring any law that serves their purpose and selling our national security to Russia and China. They cheer wars without purpose and yet, will still go to events on Memorial Day weekend proclaiming their devotion and patriotism. What a pile of road apples (country talk for horses$#t). As they fawn over their dear leader, they are concurrently supporting the wars for oil and power that only add more of those mournful white headstones to our national cemetery.

The U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission formed in 2016 and headed by Presidents Barak Obama and George W. Bush have been working for a decade to create this celebration. While that I am deeply grateful for these two presidents from different parties taking on this project, nothing now is the same as in 2016.

America250?

"Comprising the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, established by Congress in 2016, and America250.org, Inc., the nonprofit supporting organization to the Commission, America250 is a nonpartisan initiative working to engage every American in commemorating the 250th anniversary of our country. This multi-year effort, from now through July 4, 2026, is an opportunity to pause and reflect on our nation’s past, honor the contributions of all Americans, and look ahead toward the future we want to create for the next generation and beyond.

Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and Former First Ladies Laura Bush and Michelle Obama serve as Honorary National Co-Chairs. The effort is supported by a bipartisan Congressional Caucus of more than 350 members — the largest caucus in U.S. history."

- America 250

I hold no ill-will to those who choose to celebrate. After all, we are the world’s longest surviving representative government, or at least we were until the Trump era. As mentioned, my celebration will be in employing my energy to the restoration of the republic. After Trump’s birthday military parade from last June, I don’t think I could bear watching another poorly attended and humiliating debacle where Republicans mouth lies about their poisonous cocktail of White Christian Nationalism and fake patriotism. I’ve lost any pretense of pretending to be nice when discussing today’s Republicans. Every last one of them that still support the GOP are now officially “MAGA Republicans.” Maybe if the situation were less dangerous to our national security, I could still smile and be “nice,” but after more than a decade of having lies, half-truths and full-blown conspiracy theories shoved down my throat, my patience is no longer up to par.

We must remember that it’s not just the GOP and their oligarchs that put our republic on life-support. Today’s cowardly media are serving their bottom lines and don’t give a damn about democracy. Some of the most high-profile media sellouts are CBS, Disney, Reuters, the BBC, Paramount, Nexstar, Sinclair etc. etc. etc. There is also a special place in hell for Rupert Murdoch and his treasonous FOX News empire, along with the other main far-right extremist channels like Newsmax, Breitbart, OAN etc. Most entertainers have gone silent too, especially the music industry with but a few exceptions like Bruce Springsteen. The music industry is largely as corrupt and cowardly as most mainstream media outlets. The only bright spot from a genre perspective have been America’s comedians who I liken in the Trump era, to knights on horseback racing to the rescue and demonstrating brilliant and courageous leadership. Maybe on the Fourth of July and after a day of work supporting the resistance, I will binge on Colbert, John Stewart, the Jimmy’s, Seth Meyers and so on. I don’t believe that I will be alone.

I will not belabor these personal thoughts of mine. Sometimes less said is better. Every honest American knows the score. We are surrounded by an odd combination of Americans in the Trump era. Corrupt and selfish oligarchs, true patriots in the resistance, of all political stripes, Cowards like the media, news, music industry etc., schoolyard bullies which pertains to all Republicans since 2024, courageous resistance figures, a traitorous administration, voters hiding out afraid of their own shadow and an army of partisan pundits of whom less than half have any real knowledge about what they babble about and of course, Republican voters who are ashamed to admit they were conned or are too brainwashed to recognize reality. We have only six months to prepare for the biggest election since 1860.

Those of us willing to fight for what is rightfully and constitutionally ours, will unfortunately have to do our job and the jobs of all the rest. Republicans are no longer worth any effort. As I have explained about my years in counterterrorism, once humans reach a level of radicalization such as today’s GOP, they are mostly psychologically incapable of readjusting to reality. This means that even family members will be tragically lost to most of us. Friends and co-workers the same. We must now focus on who we can convince to join in the fight to restore our system of government to the luster our founders gifted us in 1776. It is a cause that 1.3 million Americans have died for since our founding. This is the price that liberty often requires. Some of those 1.3 million are my friends and colleagues. Last weekend’s Memorial Day weekend, refreshed my commitment to not dishonor their sacrifices. It may not be a civil war yet, but if more of us don’t pitch in, the risk becomes evermore present.

Our job, is to see to it that we hand off to our children and grandchildren, a nation that can see another 250 years of American democracy.

Onward America

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TAT readers,

This evening while glancing through social media, I came across the account of an officer I had served with during one of my Afghanistan deployments. He had posted three photos of soldiers who we memorialize today. I knew two of these extraordinary young soldiers, one male and the other female. It’s been fourteen years since the combat operation that took both of their lives. Both knew the risks of not only their chosen vocation, but voluntarily stepped forward into the ranks of a command often referred to as, “the tip of the spear,” or the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). America loses something special with the loss of any of our troops, but these two were USSOCOM family whom I had served alongside deployed, albeit one only briefly.

This holiday, typically the official beginning of summer vacation, is more solemn for family, friends, communities and those of us who were the brothers and sisters-in-arms of those we honor. To be frank, strong and often painful emotions accompany that solemnity. Uniformly crisp white stones stretching across countless acres of our many national cemeteries, are so plentiful as appear as wheat on America’s Great Plains. Every stone marks the final resting place of someone who has sworn that sacred oath of service, to protect and defend our constitution. The stones above those lost during combat operations, are the ones we honor today and then on Veteran’s Day, we honor every single stone.

There is an aurora of honor and dignity that hangs thickly in the air, as one walks the endless rows of stones. Here at the national cemetery in San Antonio, I always find my way to my veteran parents’ stones, as well as the stone of the mother, of a close friend. There’s a poignant semblance of peace as one sits in the perfectly maintained grass while musing through old memories, both good and less so. Remembering those who’ve borne the battle, is how a nation heals from the losses incurred to defend and sustain our republic.

Those we honor every Memorial Day, gave their full measure of devotion in service to not only our nation but its founding principles as well. In the US military, officer and enlisted both swear to “protect and defend the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.” We cannot honor their sacrifice fully, if we do not honor the principles they perished defending. We live at a point in our history where the very constitution that we swear to defend on the battlefield, is currently being trampled at home. The least that we can do for the legacy of those fallen in battle, is to honor our heroes and heroines by ensuring that we come together and protect the constitution they sacrificed their futures for.

I wish everyone both a thoughtful and enjoyable holiday weekend.

Paul

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TAT readers,

Well, I’ve begun two different essays this week, but with being a bit under the weather, this is the first to be finished. Today’s essay is not about panic or fear-mongering, but a simple question based on years of my research, and professional threat analysis. A simple history book could regurgitate the facts of America’s collapse into a nation that doesn’t give a damn about our constitution, laws, courts, history etc., etc., etc., but the facts alone, are not persuasive when considering a way forward. Today’s narrative is intended to persuade readers to begin considering that a revolution may be the only way to restore our constitutional republic.

Today’s essay, is the narrative of why it’s now time to prepare for a revolution as the only mechanism capable of restoring what the current regime has and will continue stealing from us. I have made my decision, and it’s to fight for what 250 years of Americans have protected with their lives. Okay, I get it, this sounds terrifying at first glance but don’t jump to conclusions, because not all revolutions are violent or represented by civil war. Sometimes revolutions are every bit as peaceful as they are dynamic. For example, the 1980-1989 Solidarity Movement lead by Polish worker, Lech Walesa, undid much of Soviet oppression until the Soviet Union utterly collapsed. The 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia overturned their Soviet-sponsored communist government, without firing a shot. The examples of peaceful revolution throughout history are inspiring, to say the least.

Of course, we tend to remember violent revolutions somehow more easily. Our War for Independence from Britain and the French Revolution are bold examples and nothing that we wish to pursue… unless we are forced to defend ourselves from our current Republican police state. Violence is not out of the question for us and whichever way we pursue our revolt, we have reached the point where if we are to survive based on our founding principles, revolution is an option now on the table. Please read that again… “revolution is on the table.” The only questions remaining is what form it will take and how many Americans will support it.

Onward

First I will address the “why now” question for our uprising. It’s actually the easiest point to make in this essay and comes down to just a couple of primary points.

1. America is its people and our constitution. Our people are now oppressed severely and all because to the administration and the Republican Party, it no longer matters.

   1. Our SCOTUS has made a mockery of our legal system by interpreting our constitution in a manner that twist its words into a pretzel, in order to justify illegality for autocrats and oligarchs. The ancient phrase dating back to the birth of democracy in ancient Greece, “we are all equal before the law” has become a sad joke after Chief Justice John Roberts’ “immunity” decision regarding Trump’s illegal activities.

   2. The Trump regime and again… the Republican Party breaks the law on a daily basis and there are zero repercussions. Murders of legally protesting US citizens by ICE, go unpunished and uninvestigated. Immigrants both legal and undocumented, are abused in the most horrific manner while that protesters exercising their constitutional rights are arrested and abused by thuggery, not law enforcement.

      

2. Republican voters will not abandon Trump or their party because they are in lay terms, brainwashed. For over thirty years, incremental conditioning by FOX News, now in conjunction with a whole right-wing extremist media empire, have programmed their audiences with a whole new political identity, that can easily be controlled.

   1. For a hundred years or so, first the Bolsheviks, followed by the Soviet Union and now Putin’s Russia have deployed influence operations against the US and Europe. Those operations came to be called Active Measures by the Soviets, and continue to this day as a primary weapon of Russia. The key objective of Active Measures is to achieve, reflexive control over their target audiences. All this means is that our adversaries can sit in Moscow and punch buttons and keys, that will trigger well-conditioned audiences to predictably say, do or think whatever they have been programmed by the conditioning, to do.

      

   2. To add to this, the Republican Party has been taking lessons from the Russians for a couple of decades. They have cooperated against you and I successfully, beginning with the nonsense about president Obama’s birth certificate. Onto this lunacy, they have built an entire library of conspiracy theories that our Republican family, friends, neighbors and coworkers have internalized. The triggers built into Republicans and echoed by a spineless media environment, keep them brainwashed beyond recovery.

      1. In my long career in CT/ Counterterrorism, I became quite familiar with so-called “deradicalization” programs, not just in the US. I mean no disrespect to the CVE (countering violent extremism) community at large, however success rates are murky at best and often written in narrative rather than producing quantitative data. My professional opinion is that once an individual passes a certain threshold in their radicalization, they are extremely difficult to deradicalize fully or to the point that they do not consistently remain threats.

         

         This matters here because extremism is a universal threat with varying ideologies. Today’s GOP platform as illustrated by their actions, is easily defined as an extremist threat to our republic. The overwhelming majority of Trump-era Republicans will largely remain extremist in their thinking and continue to vote for GOP violent extremism. There is no foundational evidence that they will recover any more than the countless individuals who’ve been through deradicalization programs.

   

3. It’s quite clear that we have little organized leadership within the resistance, that strategizes, plans and has successful operational experience under their belt. It sure as hell isn’t the DNC. They are already months behind in operations for the midterms and with no discernable plan. We must do this ourselves.

4. The GOP and their administration are already well into disrupting the midterm elections via a wide variety of methods. If we do not stop them now and especially in November, our odds of success drop dramatically. I will add that all of the tweets, posts, news articles and pundits claiming that scores of Republican voters are abandoning ship, are far closer to cheerleading than fact. Republicans, despite a very poor economy, war, loss of healthcare and social safety net programs, a majority of GOP voters still hold favorable opinions of their dear leader and the GOP’s anti-American ideology. This tells us that all of the facts and attacks we are making against this regime, are not doing us enough good. So long as we are reactively protesting the GOP’s daily attacks on us, we are not spending time employing an offensive strategy, as if we had one. We must go on the offensive with our own narratives instead of just scampering from one heinous Trumpian act to another.

   

The bottom line to this section is that Republicans will still vote Republican, because they are brainwashed. We will not change their minds. Our effort must be focused on turning out the apathetic or frightened voters. Only enormous hordes of anti-GOP voters will get the job done. Hungary’s historically high voter turnout, is what turned the tide for the Hungarians in freeing themselves from 16 years of the pro-Putin, Orban’ administration. Turning out massive numbers of voters would do the same for us here in the US.

Secondly, Trump, his voters, his party machine and their oligarchical billionaires have most of the conventional cards for success in an election. They have the money, power, courts, congress, federal law enforcement and the ability to censor much of our dissent. What they don’t have, are the numbers, the intense frustration of honest American voters and true patriotism.

The FOX News crowd has been dining exclusively on historical revisionism for over three decades. The GOP voting base is ignorant of not only our history, but what’s in our constitution. They no longer even care if their precious Republican party is violating the constitution or regularly breaking laws. They have basically built their beliefs on thin ice, while that the resistance has the full weight of reality, knowledge, our history and what it means to be an American as the thick, hard-frozen ice that will support us on our patriotic path. This is our one advantage and its a big one, as long as we can begin coordinating our plans and infusing apathetic voters with our will to restore our republic.

With all of the tools at the GOP’s disposal, they will continue rigging the midterms and if that isn’t enough, there is no limit to what the administration will do in order to win in November. If you remember nothing else from this essay, remember the last sentence in bold type.

Finally, it is important to realize how dire the situation is for honest, law-abiding Americans. All over the world, most nations have experienced a civil war, revolution, periodic challenges to their style of government etc. Here in the US, it has been 161 years since the US civil war ended. We’ve forgotten what it means to be threatened by such acts. We have had the good fortune to live in a nation where we generally expect people to follow rules, the law and our constitution. We’ve grown accustomed to some part of government solving our problems and coming to the rescue, regardless of the threat or challenge. We have forgotten the price of liberty. No one is coming to our rescue and the sooner that we accept this, the sooner we can all come to grips with the reality of our situation.

The most succinct expression of our situation is that; The Trump administration supported by the GOP and their elite wealth backers, will stop at nothing to ensure their success in the midterms. They are cornered by their own actions and therefore more dangerous. We cannot allow them to wield their long list of powerful tools of oppression against our constitutionally guaranteed right to a free and fair election. A peaceful (preferably) revolution may be one of the best options to protecting November’s election, hence our republic.

Revolutions don’t generally happen overnight. I write this essay so that we can all begin considering where we will stand when it comes time to stand against the tyranny of this Republican administration. Revolutions are born in our hearts and in our minds, precisely as our revolution against British demonstrated. Our modern revolution isn’t to do as the Republicans are doing, dismantling American democracy, but to reclaim it from their greedy outstretched hands. Throughout American history, there were always those who stood in the breech to defeat tyranny. Their DNA is our DNA, historically speaking. Two hundred and fifty years of our servicemembers, have given their last full measure of devotion to our nation, just to preserve its values. I will be damned if I will allow their sacrifices to have gone for nothing.

We can do this and with every intention of making this a peaceful revolution. This is my goal although we should all know by now that Trump and the GOP will do anything it takes to stay in power, up and including violence. Still, Americans have never backed down from tyranny before and is highly doubtful that we’ll start now. It won’t be easy… but if we take on this revolution, we will prevail.

Onward,

Paul

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TAT readers,

First of all, thank you for being patient with this week’s first essay. I began a different essay but my gut told me to wait and see what happened in China, between Trump, Xi and Trump’s 17-member entourage of oligarchs. The absence of much serious reporting only exacerbated the gnawing at my gut about the outcomes of this meeting. There is a very long list of issues for US and other global citizens to be concerned about when there is a meeting of these two global giants, especially in regard to who holds the most global power and leverage. At the moment, Xi holds nearly all the cards that matter, therefore making Trump’s visit one of a world leader approaching another with his hat in his outstretched hand and looking for charity. No serious businessman takes such a meeting unless they need something very, very badly. Trump does in order to solve the Strait of Hormuz disaster, the US and global economy, multiple wars and a “win” to divert attention from the Epstein files. Today, I hope to bring some clarity to all of this and more. Hang on because as they say, “it’s complicated.”

I have been professionally studying China for decades and have written deeply on a great many aspects of where she fits into the global power hierarchy, hence our national security landscape. A few of those essays will be sprinkled throughout today’s essay for those seeking deep-background reading.

The takeaways from this essay should give every honest American deep concern. What we have just watched this week is Trump and his merry band of oligarchical minstrels, demonstrating for the entire world that the US is quite likely now the number 2 superpower in the world… or painfully close to it.

There’s no need to extend this brief introduction further. There is a lot to get to, and there’s no time like the present to get started.

Onward

Let’s begin with a few hard facts in order to give everyone a baseline understanding.

• China and the US are the only true-peer superpowers remaining

• In my professional assessment, the Trump administration has via its greed and arrogance, edged the US into second place as a global superpower

• China now has far more global influence than the US under our current administration and their spineless, sycophantic Republican-led congress

• Any national security professional worth their salt, should easily see that China now holds all the “trump-cards” (pun intended).

  

• The Eurasian continent now holds 6 nuclear armed states and two of the globe’s top four economies, China and India. With the exception of Israel, the other five nuclear-armed states are aligned with China or Russia, and sometimes both.

  

• In January, China, Russia and Iran signed a high-profile strategic alignment pact.

  • “In a dramatic geopolitical development this afternoon (29 January 2026), Iran, China and Russia formally signed a comprehensive strategic pact, marking one of the most consequential shifts in 21st-century international relations. While the full text of the agreement is being released in stages by the three governments, state media in Tehran, Beijing and Moscow have acknowledged the ceremony and described it as a cornerstone for a new multipolar order.”

    • - Middle East Monitor

    • - Sanjan Solomon

    • - January 29th 2026

• Trump took his favorite oligarchs to China with him.

  • Elon Musk

  • Tim Cook of Apple

  • Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO

  • Robert "Kelly" Ortberg, CEO at Boeing

  • Blackrock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink

  • Blackstone Chairman, CEO and co-founder Stephen Schwarzman

  • Cargill Chairman and CEO Brian Sikes

  • Citi Chairman and CEO Jane Fraser

  • Coherent CEO Jim Anderson

  • GE Aerospace Chairman and CEO H. Lawrence Culp

  • Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon

  • Illumina CEO Jacob Thaysen

  • Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach

  • Meta President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick

  • Micron Chairman, President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra

  • Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon

  • Visa CEO Ryan McInerne

These points are the foundation of our concerns. The following essay is a narrative of our concerns, built onto these preceding foundational elements.

Let’s begin with a term that has bounced around DoD and the IC/ Intelligence Community for well over a decade. The term is Great Power Competition.

"Great-power competition (GPC) is a touchstone for strategists and policymakers. Its popularity stems from perceptions of China’s rise, Russia’s resurgence, and the United States’ relative decline. The term’s notoriety in policy circles is related to its use in U.S. national defense and strategy guidance documents. Sometimes GPC is dismissed as a buzzword, but it is a distinctive phenomenon that deserves scholarly investigation.

GPC is a classic feature of modern international relations grounded in a traditional power politics approach. Specifically, GPC is a permanent, compulsory, comprehensive, and exclusive contest for supremacy in a region or domain among those states considered to be the major players in the international system. The contest varies in intensity over time and space but remains a persistent aspect of the international system of sovereign states.

- Great Power Competition
- Oxford Academic
- Jonathan M DiCicco, Tudor A Onea
- January 31st, 2026

Like most national security doctrinal terminology, Great Power Competition or GPC is the competition for dominance between the globe’s primary powers, such as the US, China, Russia and occasionally, India is included as well. It is common knowledge among national security professionals that Putin is attempting to rebuild Russia to the full extent of the former, Soviet Union. He intends to regain dominance over its former satellite states such as Ukraine, the Balkans, the Baltic states, Syria and of course primary Eastern European nations such as Hungary, Poland, Germany etc.

Next door in China, now Russia’s official strategic ally, Xi has his China Dream Strategy, built on the back of his well-known BRI or Belt and Road Initiative. Xi’s strategy is far more brilliant than his oft-times poor decision-making in pursuit of his goals. The China Dream Strategy’s goal is regional hegemony by 2035 and global hegemony by 2049. India on the other hand has a decades long, close relationship with Russia extending far back into the Soviet era and although she has long been a bitter rival of China, has in the past year or so, demonstrated an interest in improving a working relationship with China.

There is little trust for China in New Delhi, which keeps India logically mistrustful of Xi and for good reason. India’s long claim of being a “non-aligned” nation has evolved into what they like to call, “multi-alignment.” India’s intentions of remaining great friends with all major world powers who are often at each other’s throats, is a very dangerous high-wire act. Yes, all of this matters a great deal to the US and our now distant allies in NATO.

In a simpler fashion… India and Russia are friends while that China and Russia are partners as well. India and China don’t love each other, but they both have Russia as a common friend. This makes for a collectively very powerful kinship among three of the world’s most powerful. Adding the US into the mix at this time, is where things begin going really poorly for US global prominence under the Trump administration. Now a few words about where the US currently stands on the world stage, and warning; it’s not a pretty picture.

From the beginning of his first term, Trump has abused and attempted to either leave or destroy NATO. Now, things have gone downhill from there with Trump first not telling NATO about the US joining Israel in their defensive attack on the world’s worst, state-sponsor of terrorism, Iran. Then, when the administration’s poorly strategized war on Iran began going poorly for the US, Trump began whining, pointing fingers and issuing threats to our NATO allies, who refused to embark on Trump’s quest for Iran’s oil and dominance over the Persian Gulf.

The US cannot just leave NATO by Trump’s order. We have a treaty with NATO and only the Senate can remove us from that treaty. Yes, Trump is furious about this. One last note applies here, that Trump is weakening the world’s longest and most successful alliance. After WW II and the formation of NATO, the alliance deterred Russian and Soviet aggression for 80 + years and throughout the Cold War. Trump is weakening NATO for Putin’s sake, as we can see by his multiple reductions of US forces in Europe. To make matters worse, a couple of days ago, Trump ordered the First Cavalry Division to stop their deployment to Europe, while the deployment was already in process. This comes on the heels of Trump removing 5,000 troops from Germany because he didn’t like comments from German Chancellor, Merz about the Iran war.

The noose is now tightening on US and previous western dominance on the world stage. Just last week on May 8th, Russia and China signed some 20 cooperative commercial efforts that solidify their relationship. Russia is no longer the senior partner in the China and Russia relationship. Xi is now clearly in the driver’s seat. It’s no surprise that most of those twenty agreements overlapped with the business interests of those oligarchs tagging along on Trump’s China visit. A little more news comes from Asia than US and western news these days and according to the Asia Times, the US came away with multiple business commitments in some of those areas represented by Trump’s tag-a-longs. What China gets out of this besides less confrontation with Washington, is still very murky, but Xi is no fool and surely got more than he gave. The big question is what exactly is China getting for further enriching US and western oligarchs? This is precisely why we must be very concerned.

As long-time readers will know, I’ve been talking about the so-called new world order for quite a while. The evolving strategic global realignment beginning after the fall of the Soviet Union, is well down the path of coming more clearly into focus. As discussed in previous writings on this topic, I had identified four primary players for sharing global dominance, the US, China, Russia and to some extent, India. The basic concept is that these four nations carve up the planet into regions that they alone have primacy over or so-called, the only nations with full sovereignty. All of the other nations on the turf of these primary sovereigns, are to become something similar to a satellite state. As you can see in the graphic, the US gets all of the Americas, as we have already witnessed with the administration’s bizarre rantings about Canada, Cuba, Venezuela and so on.

Under this system, Russia gets Europe and China gets all the rest, with India playing some unique role in the mix. With the agreements signed between Putin and Xi last week, it’s starting to look like only the US and China will be the last two primary sovereignties in the final arrangement. The catch to this is that Xi’s strategy has merit and the US has no strategy. Xi has all the cards for achieving his 2049 goal of global hegemony. China’s BRI has access to nearly the entire planet where she has already put down serious operational roots. The BRI is a play of sorts on the Silk Road of Marco Polo’s time. In other words, China has spent the past dozen years of so building bridges, train tracks, roads, commercial shipping, undersea communication cables and far more, all around the world. These are often referred to as Silk Roads. All along these massive infrastructure investments, China has planted business, manufacturing and deeply ingrained influence.

The US’s global influence pales in comparison. The administration has driven away our most important allies, upset most of countries on earth with a degenerate series of tariffs, invasions, coercion, theft and even murdering thousands by abruptly shutting down life-saving USAID programs overseas. All of this means that Air Force One landed in China with a losing hand being poorly played, up against a strong hand being well-played by Xi. Xi has powerful allies or at least powerful cooperative major powers such as Russia and partially India. The US under Trump and his Republican Party, is now despised or mistrusted in nearly every corner of the world.

So I ask again, what did Trump give up to allegedly receive such cooperation these past couple of days? This just may be the question of the year. Xi is no fool and has a plan. On the other hand, Trump is a fool and has no plan. This doesn’t mean that there is no plan though. The high-powered commercial interests that accompanied Trump to Beijing certainly have strategies to profit from increased access to Chinese and affiliated nations’ markets. Depending on the ethics of these high-powered CEOs, there are some decent opportunities but then, Elon Musk is part of this group along with several banking and financial institution CEOs, that most Americans wouldn’t trust if their lives depended on it.

For one thing, Trump went to ask Xi for help resolving the mess he’s made of the global economy.

"The expanding war in Iran is disrupting, if not devastating, the global economy. Meanwhile, the sound of silence from normally voluble leaders of China and Russia is telling. From their point of view, silence is the best way for them to let Washington entangle itself in a protracted war in the Middle East, opening space to expand the influence of President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Europe and for President Xi Jinping of China in the Indo-Pacific.

Iran’s strategy of closing the Strait of Hormuz using naval mines, coastal missile batteries, and drone swarms is holding the global economy hostage as energy prices have surged. If the US plan with Iran was to mirror the Venezuela playbook by achieving a swift, overwhelming action to remove a perceived threat and declare victory, it has backfired horribly."

- How Russia and China are winning the war in Iran
- Peterson Institute for International Economics
- Elina Ribakova (PIIE) and Alicia García-Herrero (Bruegel; Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
- March 30th, 2026

The US has no serious options against Iran at this point, with the exception of a full-blown invasion. Trump’s political future is currently looking pretty dim and pursuing a large-scale boots-on-the-ground invasion at this time, would be a self-inflicted mortal wound to his administration. Look, I despise the Iranian regime as much as anyone and maybe more considering my years in counterterrorism, but there is no appetite at home for another war in the Middle East, especially when Americans are being crushed by an administration and congress demonstrably inept at governing and affordability issues.

Trump’s only real global connections are Putin and Milei in Argentina. Much of the world doesn’t care much for Xi either, but with 60% of the world’s population in Asia, and an extensive global network that controls much of the world’s commerce, he is the lesser of two evils. It still startles me how far the US has fallen in a little over a year. That a China defined by military intimidation, predatory financial practices and human rights abuse, looks better to most than the US under this administration, is beyond humiliating.

Even the Arab Gulf oil states have lost cohesion, with the UAE leaving OPEC a week ago. Qatar left in 2019. The Saudis are furious at the inability of the US to hold up their end of the bargain, and protect the Arab nations on the west side of the Gulf from Iran. China has made an enormous play for influence in the Gulf. She has invested 101 billion dollars in Gulf states since 2005 and with the US more than a bit out of favor at the moment, the region is ripe for sliding closer to China. It would seem that everything Trump and the Republicans touch, dies.

As I sit here writing, I just saw a news story pop up that may tell us what Trump gave up to Xi. First of all, a large arms sale to Taiwan that the administration had approved, is now on hold and Trump says he is considering whether to go through with it. This is a high-priority issue for Xi and helps him advance his China Dream Strategy. Considering that part of the agenda for this trip was to ask Xi for help in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, something Xi really wanted had to be on the table. The issue of Taiwan has long been a redline for the US and other allies. Since 1949, the US has backed Taiwan’s independence from China. Not only does Trump’s potential halting of this arms package to Taiwan put her at significant risk, but due to the number of munitions borrowed from the Pacific Theater for use against Iran, we no longer have enough stockpiled for any sustained conflict with China over Taiwan.

This morning in The Asia Times, a major Hong Kong based and reputable newspaper, reads very different from what is being printed here in the US.

"Salesman Trump leaves China with very little in his bag." The subtitle was even more mundane: "Summit yields agreement to continue talking about a potential framework for a deal – though unlikely during Trump’s term."

An excerpt from the article:
"Sure, there’s talk of some Boeing plane orders, soybean purchases and a reciprocal Xi visit to Washington later this year. But the truly big issues – unfettered access to rare earths, AI coordination or reopening the Strait of Hormuz – were left on the table for another time."

- Salesman Trump leaves China with very little in his bag
- The Asia Times
- William Pesek
- May 15th, 2026

As we all know here in the US, truth from the White House and the Republican-led congress is hard to come by. It will be interesting to see if our mainstream news outlets publish Asia’s version or the typical Trump-friendly US version. Either way, an analytical look at this high-profile visit shows that it was more hoopla than business. The big questions remain on the table. Xi easily won this round of talks by being a generous host with plenty of fanfare to make Trump feel important. It’s no secret that buttering him up is a profitable tactic when you want things from him. Xi’s takeaways were cooperation on a handful of business ventures that are good for China. He also communicated a very firm warning to the US regarding Taiwan, saying, that “clashes” could occur if the Taiwan situation wasn’t handled properly. Xi’s stern warning was in stark contrast to Trump’s attempts to put a positive spin on their talks.

To make matters worse regarding Taiwan, Trump in press interview claimed that Taiwan “was a great bargaining chip.” He followed up with saying that he just thought that Taiwan was too far away to defend for the US. You don’t need to be a bloodhound to smell the sellout coming for Taiwan.

In my estimation, I believe that when more reporting is available, we’ll see little accomplished from these meetings outside of Boeing likely selling more planes to Xi and China buying soybeans, which they’d already agreed to last fall. Trump appeared weaker due to having to ask Xi for help with Iran and not committing to go through with the Taiwanese arms package. Time will tell if he does or doesn’t but if I were Taiwanese, I would be nervous. In the big picture, it is daily more apparent, that the US under Trump’s leadership, has few friends in the world and a significantly weaker national security posture because of it. Nothing occurred in Beijing that will relieve the crushing affordability issues plaguing the US taxpayers, which will only increase our frustration with the administration. I frankly don’t see Xi making any heroic efforts to settle the Strait of Hormuz issue either, unless… Trump sold-out Taiwan. I imagine that we’ll find out which, soon enough.

I hope this very dense essay helps to better understand the bigger picture for everyone. The saddest part of this summit, is that it only intensifies my feelings that as a nation, we are no longer either a beacon of democracy or the primary global superpower. One thing for sure though, is that if we don’t rid ourselves of the entirety of this administration and it’s Republican leadership in congress, we will certainly become number two, in a short amount of time. Free and fair midterms are our only way out and even this is not a sure bet. We have the power to change all of this, if we only stand together in November.

Onward to November and the restoration of our republic.

Paul

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TAT readers,

In honor of this coming Sunday’s Mother’s Day, today I am writing to not only honor mothers, but women all together, as the mightiest of resources in the fight against the Republican Party’s toxic misogynism and plethora of other immoral, illegal and unconstitutional actions. Throughout American history, our nation’s women have pursued justice for centuries to become fully equal. They are not there yet and for Mother’s Day, I wish to applaud and revere their courage and tenacity.

All my life I’ve heard in a variety of forms an old saying; “I brought you into this world and I can take you out as well.” This was nearly always spoken in jest, but today’s essay about the role women have played throughout history as undaunted advocates against tyranny and oppression have clearly demonstrated that they are indefatigable “mama bears,” willing to stand in the breech to protect her children. They are often called mama bears. There is even a name for their ethical and tenacious pursuit of justice, the “mama bear effect.”

"Have you ever met a creature more fierce than a mother who is worried about her children? That’s surely where the moniker "mama bear" comes from. The peaceful black bears who used to wander into my backyard as a child were very nurturing to their cubs. But even as kids we knew not to go near their cubs; that mama bear would kill us in a heartbeat if she thought her cubs were threatened."

- Motherhood Changes the Decision-Making Area of the Brain
- Psychology Today
- Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
- July 20, 2020

Most of us have seen the mama bear effect in various times and places in our lives. These can include, the lengths a mother will go to in order to protect her babies, as an advocate for combatting child abuse, bullying and especially, child sexual abuse, but also in a hundred different situations when our mothers or other women in our lives, will fiercely stand up to overwhelming opposition. Yes, there are papa bears as well and they can be just as fierce in defense of their families as women, but then again, it is the mother that carries and delivers life. Their unique connective bond with the children they carry, deliver and nurture, is far different from what a man experiences.

I saw this in my own mother. Though a quiet and polite woman to a fault, once her jaw was set defending the indefensible threats to my brother and I, it was wise to pay attention. I’ve seen it in family members and friends who’ve adopted, fostered or otherwise supported children without access to their own mother or similar support systems. If I were today’s GOP, drunk on toxic misogyny and abuse of all who are not male, white Christian Nationalists and extremely right-wing, I would be paying a great deal of attention to the power of all mothers and women in general. I believe women to be a greatly under-empowered strength, for fighting back against the blanket immorality and abuse by today’s Republicans, against all of America’s children.

As I have long indicated, I believe today’s DNC to be AWOL from the resistance in any meaningful way. If they are reading this, I hope they take the hint to prioritize women, as the collective Joan d’Arc of the resistance movement. There are no fiercer warriors than women operating as mama bears. There are countless historical examples of how a woman or a movement of like-minded women have made and changed history. Today, I wish to bring you some insightful history to the role women have played in advocating for and achieving justice for their children or the children of others, up to and including, entire nations. I like to think of the women of our once proud nation, as American Amazons, comparable to the once thought mythical women warriors of Greek mythology.

"Amazons, in mythology, are a group of female warriors prominently featured in ancient Greek narratives. These women formed a distinct society characterized by their rejection of traditional female roles, engaging in combat, hunting, and land cultivation. The myths describe them as fierce and skilled fighters, equal to men in battle. The Amazons were said to inhabit the land of Thermodon, with their capital in Themiscyra, ruled by a queen. In Greek mythology, they appear in notable stories, such as the tasks of Heracles and the Trojan War, striving to gain recognition as formidable opponents.

Historically, the existence of Amazons was long regarded as fictional until archaeological findings in the 21st century suggested that warrior women resembling the Amazons did exist, particularly in regions of northern Turkey and Ukraine. These discoveries revealed that women of the Sauromatian culture were buried with weapons, indicating their role as warriors. The myth of the Amazons, influenced by observations of real-life female tribes and cultural exchanges, has continued to capture the imagination across various periods and has inspired numerous artistic representations throughout history."

- Amazons (mythology)
- EBSCO
- Authored By: Caffrey, Cait 

Onward

Today, I’ll tell you a couple of short stories that clearly show American women’s untiring and ferocious determination when they feel unseen and unheard. As far as women’s rights have come in my lifetime, there are still significant hurdles to being fully equal. Today’s GOP is actively reversing many of those gains and have charted a course for even fewer rights for women. As you will see in the following historical examples, these misogynist Republicans are in for a fight to the finish with women, and the men that respect and honor them, me included.

From the very beginning of our nation, there were women who rankled at being second class citizens without a vote, property rights and countless other restrictions from full citizenship. President and founder John Adam’s wife Abigail was one of these women outspoken against giving men “unlimited power” over the women in our nascent nation. Despite our founders being overwhelmingly progressive for their era or “woke,” there were notable vacancies in their wokeness, with women’s rights and slavery being a glaring examples.

"In the nation’s founding generation, Abigail Adams engaged directly with questions of law and representation, urging that the new republic avoid replicating old injustices.  As the nation took shape, she wrote to her husband to “remember the ladies” when creating new laws and cautioned against granting husbands “unlimited power.” Her letters are among the earliest writings in our country calling for the expansion of women’s rights."

- The Women Who Built Our Democracy Before It Included Them
- The Bush Center
- Alexis Yelvington
- March 05, 2026

Ironically, I grew up in an America where a man was not considered manly, if he oppressed and abused women within his family, community or nation. Such behavior was generally considered shameful and this belief crossed all political, racial or religious barriers. Of course, such toxic behavior did occur at the time, and more often than anyone wishes to recall, but was never condoned, hence the secrecy such men impose on those they abuse and habitually disrespect.

"Project 2025 seeks to impose a hierarchal, gendered, patriarchal vision of society. It is particularly focused on enforcing a vision of the family that relies on fixed and narrowly defined gender roles and in undermining protections that enable women and LGBTQI+ people to thrive outside of a male-dominated, heterosexual family."

- Project 2025: What It Means for Women, Families, and Gender Justice
- National Women's Law Center

Today, the GOP indoctrinates men to behave abusively towards women and in fact, rewards them for it, therefore removing that previous social stigma. Project 2025 even codifies critical parts of their beliefs about women. The oft employed comparison of the GOP to The Handmaid’s Tale, is frighteningly accurate. Abusive Christian Nationalism wields theological guilt and punishment as weapons, to “keep women in their place.”

American women’s movements

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” 

- Margaret Mead

The American Suffragette movement

The acquisition of the right to vote for women in America, took 132 years of hard fought battles with family, communities and yes, the US government. How tragic, that in a nation where we proclaimed in our founding documents that we were all “equal,” women and a wide spectrum of other Americans were not, and remain so under Trump-era Republican administrations. Slavery ended and former male slaves acquired voting rights, long before women would. Of course, these former male slaves experienced countless obstacles to voting, while that courageous women of all races toiled on for another 55 years after the Civil War, before they managed to have the legal right to vote.

Suffrage, was finally achieved when congress finally ratified the 19th amendment in 1920. The truth is, that it was actually born of the courageous and dogged determination of a long list of remarkable women, beginning in 1848 and 60 years after the ratification of our constitution. Those heroines in Seneca, NY in 1848 were the birth mothers and with little more than their own strong will, they began growing a powerful national coalition of women and notable men like Frederick Douglas to advance their cause. The 1848 Seneca convention was convened by a combination of activist abolitionists and suffragettes, seeking universal suffrage. There were famous names like Susan B. Anthony, a talented strategist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who initiated the first conference in NY, Dr. Alice Paul, a fiery activist who among others, led protests outside the White House from 1917-1919 despite beatings and harassment.

Then there is one of the most remarkable stories in the movement such as that of a former slave named Sojourner Truth who despite a lifetime of tragedy, still made an extraordinary difference in the movement. In an iconic speech in Akron, Ohio in 1851 she made one of the most powerful speeches in American history for slave and women’s rights, called, “Ain’t I a Woman.” Surprising to most Americans, Helen Keller was a self-described “militant suffragette” who wielded her significant public notoriety in support of a wide variety of civil rights causes including suffrage.

"A self-described “militant suffragette,” Keller used the considerable notoriety she gained in her adolescence to advocate for others for the rest of her life. In 1913, Keller participated in the large parade known as the “Woman Suffrage Procession” in Washington, DC. Her interest in women’s rights was rooted in her connections to contemporary labor movements. Keller was particularly interested in working people’s issues, including industrial safety standards, which led to membership in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Keller’s radical politics also included supporting the movement to increase access to birth control for women. When a biographical film called Deliverance, which featured Keller, premiered in New York City, she joined with striking actors instead of attending."

- Helen Keller
- National Park Service 

These are just a handful of the extraordinary women who brought the vote to their sisters. As I was researching this essay, I found names I was familiar with and far more that I wasn’t. The list of heroines that willed the 19th amendment into our constitution, is very long indeed. These early advocates stretched to every corner of our nation and included warriors of every race, religion and ethnicity. Without them, who knows how long women would have been without a vote. As many readers know, I read a great deal of history. Reacquainting myself with the suffragette movement for this essay, has been nothing short of inspiring. Like Helen Keller, most of these warriors, supported many causes associated with what today we call civil rights.

The ERA, Equal Rights Amendment

In 1923, just three years after congress ratified the women’s right to vote, Dr. Alice Paul was relentless to continue her advocacy for national equality and managed to introduce the ERA to congress. Every year, hers and other’s advocacy persistently prodded congress to take up the ERA. It wouldn’t be until 1940 though that the ERA acquired enough bi-partisan support to get the amendment onto the floor of congress. Then, in 1955, Representative Martha Wright Griffiths (D-MI) was elected to congress and she would then champion the proposed amendment. It would take her until 1970 to acquire enough support to get the ERA out of the Judiciary Committee and onto the floor of congress. The House would pass the bill and the Senate would offer an amendment, but there would not be enough time left in the 1970 congressional session to get the bill passed. During the debate in the House of Representatives, she was famously quoted.

"Mr. Speaker, this is not a battle between the sexes—nor a battle between this body and women. This is a battle with the Supreme Court of the United States.”

- Representative Martha Wright Griffiths

It wasn’t until 2020 that enough states had ratified the ERA for it to become law, but via a complicated set of legal issues surrounding expired time limits for enough states to ratify the amendment, it remains unpublished, a requirement for it to become law. The first Trump administration issued a memo opposing publication of the passed amendment in our constitution, therefore rendering it a dead amendment. In 2023, a DC appeals court would seal its fate for the time being with a ruling on upholding the original time limits for ratification. The advocates for equal rights for women and all Americans, won’t give up. They are still mama bears protecting everyone from discrimination. They’ve been diligently and actively pursuing this goal since 1848 and they’ve overcome far worse obstructions to their intentions. I would be remiss here if I did not congratulate the League of Women Voters, where volunteer, deeply principled and non-partisan women, heroically do their best to inform our nation on all aspects of voting. They believe that free and fair elections are our birthright. Bravo to these heroines who have been at their mission faithfully for a century.

Throughout US and world history, it has been women, often working without pay and recognition that have changed our world and its history. It is a mistake to underestimate their power and most especially when they are focused on protecting those disadvantaged by rights, wealth, disability or sex. In today’s America, we are learning how to deal with a variety of gender issues and yes, women are again on the front lines of fighting for equality. As a parent, I well understand that parents love their children, even though we may not like their behavior at times. Mama bear syndrome takes this to an entirely new level.

No matter how much the MAGA GOP threatens our guaranteed constitutional rights, there are two strikes against them. First, Americans don’t back down from bullies and secondly, anyone taking on legions of women warriors has extremely poor judgement. Throughout our history, women have made remarkable contributions to our nation and the world.

It’s no secret that the Trump administration does not respect women and is building a culture of toxic masculinity. The lifelong sexual predator and probable child sexual predator has a lifetime of well-documented abuse and disrespect for women. His Secretary of Defense and several other members of his cabinet are only slightly better, if at all. Project 2025 outlines limiting rights for women and all others that are not white Christian Nationalist males. No more women or officers of color, occupy top Pentagon positions since Hegseth’s purges. The only cabinet members purged from his cabinet are women and every single day there’s a new revelation regarding Trump’s close association with Jeffery Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Even worse, Republicans are now considering a pardon, clemency or a commuted sentence for Maxwell, a convicted sex and child sex trafficker.

The Republicans in his administration and congress, are doing all possible, up and to include breaking the law, to protect Trump from his obvious involvement in the most outrageous and disgusting scandal in American history. I nor any other honest American can understand how any woman can vote for Trump, his cronies and his party considering his humiliating record with women and children. I have daughters and granddaughters that I fear for with this version of the Republican Party in charge of our nation. In America, not only do women now have lesser rights, but are apparently, legitimate prey, for the those in favor with the Republican Party.

As we head into the midterms, I see toxic masculinity, sexual predation and coverups as a primary narrative against the depravity of GOP rule. Women and others disenfranchised by one gender issue or another, must be empowered and supported robustly against the depravity of MAGA oppression on all causes, not just gender. As I watch congressional hearings, I see women representatives and Senators mincing Republican witnesses with intelligence, facts and perseverance. They are completely fearless against the cowardly bullying by Republican witnesses. It’s true that men in congress are doing the same, but then again, they are not risking as much personally as women and others regarding gender. I penned a powerful essay on this in July of 2024 during the run-up to the November presidential election.

If the DNC can’t be convinced to get in the game, we must do it for them. American women have long proved that they can succeed on their own, but why should they? If we fail to defend everyone’s rights, we would not be honoring the very constitution that we claim to love. This is the intent of our constitution and literally what it means to have liberty. Here in the US, we fought a civil war to set men free. Don’t you think we should commit ourselves equally in support of women? Throughout this last dozen years or so of Trump Republicanism, I have long wondered how Republican politicians can look their wives, daughters and granddaughters in the eye when they go home. They are severing the rights of all women, including the ones in their own families.

My final thoughts on this topic are relatively simple and pointedly straightforward. Women bear the children that become our future citizens. These mama-bears and the men who support them are our future. While most men have evolved towards total equality for all Americans, those running our republic have not. It incenses me watching Pete Hegseth’s drunken, toxic masculinity degrade the service of women in our military. My first wife was one of the best soldiers in our company. I’ve served with women within the US Special Operations Command in combat zones that were nothing short of extraordinary, in every way.

Lastly, when I see my daughters and granddaughters I see our future. There is zero chance that I will not defend the equality of their citizenship. If everyone saw the women in their families, communities and our nation in a similar fashion, there would be no Trump or MAGA Republicans. Sure, they claim to love the women in their lives too, but not as full citizens with an equal stake in our future. That is not America my friends and until we realize this, there will always be a MAGA or MAGA-like threat to the founding principles of liberty, that our founders foresaw for our young nation.

Bravo and thank you to all mothers who are “mama-bears” for their own or other’s children. True patriots will always be honored to stand next to you in your quest for equality and respect, me included. Not ahead of or behind you, but shoulder to shoulder. So long as you remain fierce defenders of our future, the words from President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address will ring true; “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Happy Mother’s Day and thank you to all,

Paul

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TAT readers,

In honor of this coming Sunday’s Mother’s Day, today I am writing to not only honor mothers, but women all together, as the mightiest of resources in the fight against the Republican Party’s toxic misogynism and plethora of other immoral, illegal and unconstitutional actions. Throughout American history, our nation’s women have pursued justice for centuries to become fully equal. They are not there yet and for Mother’s Day, I wish to applaud and revere their courage and tenacity.

All my life I’ve heard in a variety of forms an old saying; “I brought you into this world and I can take you out as well.” This was nearly always spoken in jest, but today’s essay about the role women have played throughout history as undaunted advocates against tyranny and oppression have clearly demonstrated that they are indefatigable “mama bears,” willing to stand in the breech to protect her children. They are often called mama bears. There is even a name for their ethical and tenacious pursuit of justice, the “mama bear effect.”

"Have you ever met a creature more fierce than a mother who is worried about her children? That’s surely where the moniker "mama bear" comes from. The peaceful black bears who used to wander into my backyard as a child were very nurturing to their cubs. But even as kids we knew not to go near their cubs; that mama bear would kill us in a heartbeat if she thought her cubs were threatened."

- Motherhood Changes the Decision-Making Area of the Brain
- Psychology Today
- Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
- July 20, 2020

Most of us have seen the mama bear effect in various times and places in our lives. These can include, the lengths a mother will go to in order to protect her babies, as an advocate for combatting child abuse, bullying and especially, child sexual abuse, but also in a hundred different situations when our mothers or other women in our lives, will fiercely stand up to overwhelming opposition. Yes, there are papa bears as well and they can be just as fierce in defense of their families as women, but then again, it is the mother that carries and delivers life. Their unique connective bond with the children they carry, deliver and nurture, is far different from what a man experiences.

I saw this in my own mother. Though a quiet and polite woman to a fault, once her jaw was set defending the indefensible threats to my brother and I, it was wise to pay attention. I’ve seen it in family members and friends who’ve adopted, fostered or otherwise supported children without access to their own mother or similar support systems. If I were today’s GOP, drunk on toxic misogyny and abuse of all who are not male, white Christian Nationalists and extremely right-wing, I would be paying a great deal of attention to the power of all mothers and women in general. I believe women to be a greatly under-empowered strength, for fighting back against the blanket immorality and abuse by today’s Republicans, against all of America’s children.

As I have long indicated, I believe today’s DNC to be AWOL from the resistance in any meaningful way. If they are reading this, I hope they take the hint to prioritize women, as the collective Joan d’Arc of the resistance movement. There are no fiercer warriors than women operating as mama bears. There are countless historical examples of how a woman or a movement of like-minded women have made and changed history. Today, I wish to bring you some insightful history to the role women have played in advocating for and achieving justice for their children or the children of others, up to and including, entire nations. I like to think of the women of our once proud nation, as American Amazons, comparable to the once thought mythical women warriors of Greek mythology.

"Amazons, in mythology, are a group of female warriors prominently featured in ancient Greek narratives. These women formed a distinct society characterized by their rejection of traditional female roles, engaging in combat, hunting, and land cultivation. The myths describe them as fierce and skilled fighters, equal to men in battle. The Amazons were said to inhabit the land of Thermodon, with their capital in Themiscyra, ruled by a queen. In Greek mythology, they appear in notable stories, such as the tasks of Heracles and the Trojan War, striving to gain recognition as formidable opponents.

Historically, the existence of Amazons was long regarded as fictional until archaeological findings in the 21st century suggested that warrior women resembling the Amazons did exist, particularly in regions of northern Turkey and Ukraine. These discoveries revealed that women of the Sauromatian culture were buried with weapons, indicating their role as warriors. The myth of the Amazons, influenced by observations of real-life female tribes and cultural exchanges, has continued to capture the imagination across various periods and has inspired numerous artistic representations throughout history."

- Amazons (mythology)
- EBSCO
- Authored By: Caffrey, Cait 

Onward

Today, I’ll tell you a couple of short stories that clearly show American women’s untiring and ferocious determination when they feel unseen and unheard. As far as women’s rights have come in my lifetime, there are still significant hurdles to being fully equal. Today’s GOP is actively reversing many of those gains and have charted a course for even fewer rights for women. As you will see in the following historical examples, these misogynist Republicans are in for a fight to the finish with women, and the men that respect and honor them, me included.

From the very beginning of our nation, there were women who rankled at being second class citizens without a vote, property rights and countless other restrictions from full citizenship. President and founder John Adam’s wife Abigail was one of these women outspoken against giving men “unlimited power” over the women in our nascent nation. Despite our founders being overwhelmingly progressive for their era or “woke,” there were notable vacancies in their wokeness, with women’s rights and slavery being a glaring examples.

"In the nation’s founding generation, Abigail Adams engaged directly with questions of law and representation, urging that the new republic avoid replicating old injustices.  As the nation took shape, she wrote to her husband to “remember the ladies” when creating new laws and cautioned against granting husbands “unlimited power.” Her letters are among the earliest writings in our country calling for the expansion of women’s rights."

- The Women Who Built Our Democracy Before It Included Them
- The Bush Center
- Alexis Yelvington
- March 05, 2026

Ironically, I grew up in an America where a man was not considered manly, if he oppressed and abused women within his family, community or nation. Such behavior was generally considered shameful and this belief crossed all political, racial or religious barriers. Of course, such toxic behavior did occur at the time, and more often than anyone wishes to recall, but was never condoned, hence the secrecy such men impose on those they abuse and habitually disrespect.

"Project 2025 seeks to impose a hierarchal, gendered, patriarchal vision of society. It is particularly focused on enforcing a vision of the family that relies on fixed and narrowly defined gender roles and in undermining protections that enable women and LGBTQI+ people to thrive outside of a male-dominated, heterosexual family."

- Project 2025: What It Means for Women, Families, and Gender Justice
- National Women's Law Center

Today, the GOP indoctrinates men to behave abusively towards women and in fact, rewards them for it, therefore removing that previous social stigma. Project 2025 even codifies critical parts of their beliefs about women. The oft employed comparison of the GOP to The Handmaid’s Tale, is frighteningly accurate. Abusive Christian Nationalism wields theological guilt and punishment as weapons, to “keep women in their place.”

American women’s movements

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” 

- Margaret Mead

The American Suffragette movement

The acquisition of the right to vote for women in America, took 132 years of hard fought battles with family, communities and yes, the US government. How tragic, that in a nation where we proclaimed in our founding documents that we were all “equal,” women and a wide spectrum of other Americans were not, and remain so under Trump-era Republican administrations. Slavery ended and former male slaves acquired voting rights, long before women would. Of course, these former male slaves experienced countless obstacles to voting, while that courageous women of all races toiled on for another 55 years after the Civil War, before they managed to have the legal right to vote.

Suffrage, was finally achieved when congress finally ratified the 19th amendment in 1920. The truth is, that it was actually born of the courageous and dogged determination of a long list of remarkable women, beginning in 1848 and 60 years after the ratification of our constitution. Those heroines in Seneca, NY in 1848 were the birth mothers and with little more than their own strong will, they began growing a powerful national coalition of women and notable men like Frederick Douglas to advance their cause. The 1848 Seneca convention was convened by a combination of activist abolitionists and suffragettes, seeking universal suffrage. There were famous names like Susan B. Anthony, a talented strategist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who initiated the first conference in NY, Dr. Alice Paul, a fiery activist who among others, led protests outside the White House from 1917-1919 despite beatings and harassment.

Then there is one of the most remarkable stories in the movement such as that of a former slave named Sojourner Truth who despite a lifetime of tragedy, still made an extraordinary difference in the movement. In an iconic speech in Akron, Ohio in 1851 she made one of the most powerful speeches in American history for slave and women’s rights, called, “Ain’t I a Woman.” Surprising to most Americans, Helen Keller was a self-described “militant suffragette” who wielded her significant public notoriety in support of a wide variety of civil rights causes including suffrage.

"A self-described “militant suffragette,” Keller used the considerable notoriety she gained in her adolescence to advocate for others for the rest of her life. In 1913, Keller participated in the large parade known as the “Woman Suffrage Procession” in Washington, DC. Her interest in women’s rights was rooted in her connections to contemporary labor movements. Keller was particularly interested in working people’s issues, including industrial safety standards, which led to membership in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Keller’s radical politics also included supporting the movement to increase access to birth control for women. When a biographical film called Deliverance, which featured Keller, premiered in New York City, she joined with striking actors instead of attending."

- Helen Keller
- National Park Service 

These are just a handful of the extraordinary women who brought the vote to their sisters. As I was researching this essay, I found names I was familiar with and far more that I wasn’t. The list of heroines that willed the 19th amendment into our constitution, is very long indeed. These early advocates stretched to every corner of our nation and included warriors of every race, religion and ethnicity. Without them, who knows how long women would have been without a vote. As many readers know, I read a great deal of history. Reacquainting myself with the suffragette movement for this essay, has been nothing short of inspiring. Like Helen Keller, most of these warriors, supported many causes associated with what today we call civil rights.

The ERA, Equal Rights Amendment

In 1923, just three years after congress ratified the women’s right to vote, Dr. Alice Paul was relentless to continue her advocacy for national equality and managed to introduce the ERA to congress. Every year, hers and other’s advocacy persistently prodded congress to take up the ERA. It wouldn’t be until 1940 though that the ERA acquired enough bi-partisan support to get the amendment onto the floor of congress. Then, in 1955, Representative Martha Wright Griffiths (D-MI) was elected to congress and she would then champion the proposed amendment. It would take her until 1970 to acquire enough support to get the ERA out of the Judiciary Committee and onto the floor of congress. The House would pass the bill and the Senate would offer an amendment, but there would not be enough time left in the 1970 congressional session to get the bill passed. During the debate in the House of Representatives, she was famously quoted.

"Mr. Speaker, this is not a battle between the sexes—nor a battle between this body and women. This is a battle with the Supreme Court of the United States.”

- Representative Martha Wright Griffiths

It wasn’t until 2020 that enough states had ratified the ERA for it to become law, but via a complicated set of legal issues surrounding expired time limits for enough states to ratify the amendment, it remains unpublished, a requirement for it to become law. The first Trump administration issued a memo opposing publication of the passed amendment in our constitution, therefore rendering it a dead amendment. In 2023, a DC appeals court would seal its fate for the time being with a ruling on upholding the original time limits for ratification. The advocates for equal rights for women and all Americans, won’t give up. They are still mama bears protecting everyone from discrimination. They’ve been diligently and actively pursuing this goal since 1848 and they’ve overcome far worse obstructions to their intentions. I would be remiss here if I did not congratulate the League of Women Voters, where volunteer, deeply principled and non-partisan women, heroically do their best to inform our nation on all aspects of voting. They believe that free and fair elections are our birthright. Bravo to these heroines who have been at their mission faithfully for a century.

Throughout US and world history, it has been women, often working without pay and recognition that have changed our world and its history. It is a mistake to underestimate their power and most especially when they are focused on protecting those disadvantaged by rights, wealth, disability or sex. In today’s America, we are learning how to deal with a variety of gender issues and yes, women are again on the front lines of fighting for equality. As a parent, I well understand that parents love their children, even though we may not like their behavior at times. Mama bear syndrome takes this to an entirely new level.

No matter how much the MAGA GOP threatens our guaranteed constitutional rights, there are two strikes against them. First, Americans don’t back down from bullies and secondly, anyone taking on legions of women warriors has extremely poor judgement. Throughout our history, women have made remarkable contributions to our nation and the world.

It’s no secret that the Trump administration does not respect women and is building a culture of toxic masculinity. The lifelong sexual predator and probable child sexual predator has a lifetime of well-documented abuse and disrespect for women. His Secretary of Defense and several other members of his cabinet are only slightly better, if at all. Project 2025 outlines limiting rights for women and all others that are not white Christian Nationalist males. No more women or officers of color, occupy top Pentagon positions since Hegseth’s purges. The only cabinet members purged from his cabinet are women and every single day there’s a new revelation regarding Trump’s close association with Jeffery Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Even worse, Republicans are now considering a pardon, clemency or a commuted sentence for Maxwell, a convicted sex and child sex trafficker.

The Republicans in his administration and congress, are doing all possible, up and to include breaking the law, to protect Trump from his obvious involvement in the most outrageous and disgusting scandal in American history. I nor any other honest American can understand how any woman can vote for Trump, his cronies and his party considering his humiliating record with women and children. I have daughters and granddaughters that I fear for with this version of the Republican Party in charge of our nation. In America, not only do women now have lesser rights, but are apparently, legitimate prey, for the those in favor with the Republican Party.

As we head into the midterms, I see toxic masculinity, sexual predation and coverups as a primary narrative against the depravity of GOP rule. Women and others disenfranchised by one gender issue or another, must be empowered and supported robustly against the depravity of MAGA oppression on all causes, not just gender. As I watch congressional hearings, I see women representatives and Senators mincing Republican witnesses with intelligence, facts and perseverance. They are completely fearless against the cowardly bullying by Republican witnesses. It’s true that men in congress are doing the same, but then again, they are not risking as much personally as women and others regarding gender. I penned a powerful essay on this in July of 2024 during the run-up to the November presidential election.

If the DNC can’t be convinced to get in the game, we must do it for them. American women have long proved that they can succeed on their own, but why should they? If we fail to defend everyone’s rights, we would not be honoring the very constitution that we claim to love. This is the intent of our constitution and literally what it means to have liberty. Here in the US, we fought a civil war to set men free. Don’t you think we should commit ourselves equally in support of women? Throughout this last dozen years or so of Trump Republicanism, I have long wondered how Republican politicians can look their wives, daughters and granddaughters in the eye when they go home. They are severing the rights of all women, including the ones in their own families.

My final thoughts on this topic are relatively simple and pointedly straightforward. Women bear the children that become our future citizens. These mama-bears and the men who support them are our future. While most men have evolved towards total equality for all Americans, those running our republic have not. It incenses me watching Pete Hegseth’s drunken, toxic masculinity degrade the service of women in our military. My first wife was one of the best soldiers in our company. I’ve served with women within the US Special Operations Command in combat zones that were nothing short of extraordinary, in every way.

Lastly, when I see my daughters and granddaughters I see our future. There is zero chance that I will not defend the equality of their citizenship. If everyone saw the women in their families, communities and our nation in a similar fashion, there would be no Trump or MAGA Republicans. Sure, they claim to love the women in their lives too, but not as full citizens with an equal stake in our future. That is not America my friends and until we realize this, there will always be a MAGA or MAGA-like threat to the founding principles of liberty, that our founders foresaw for our young nation.

Bravo and thank you to all mothers who are “mama-bears” for their own or other’s children. True patriots will always be honored stand next to you in your quest for equality and respect, me included. Not ahead of or behind you, but shoulder to shoulder. So long as you remain fierce defenders of our future, the words from President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address will ring true; “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Happy Mother’s Day and thank you to all,

Paul

Subscribe now

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TAT readers,

Today’s essay is something that we must understand sooner than later, if we are to have the midterm results that will make a difference. I have analyzed, strategized, planned, executed and assessed plenty of influence campaigns throughout my military career. Roughly two-thirds were focused on different native populations in combat zones. While that there are military processes for planning influence campaigns, I have long understand that successful influence operations are part art and part science, with the most important part being art, especially in the analysis, strategy and planning phases. The key is to collect intelligence and analyze everything about an environment, nation, region, specific people etc., with a clear, unbiased eye. This analysis is how we come to what is called the COG, or Center of Gravity of our adversaries or competitors. Please bear with me for just a couple more paragraphs and this won’t sound so much like, “military-speak.”

Since there have long been competing professional definitions for COG in doctrinal writing, I will add a simplified and inclusive definition of my own in the quote below which applies to the current assault on our republic by the administration and Republican Party. In its simplest form, the COG is what we have to break down more anything else, to cause our adversaries to be unable to reach their goals.”

Center of Gravity

A source of massed power—physical, ideological, and a source of leverage, whose degradation, neutralization, or destruction would have the most decisive impact on the adversary's ability to accomplish their organization's objectives. 

- Cobaugh
- May 2026

Okay my friends, no more military doctrine-speak. All you need to remember is that we must focus on the one thing that enables this corrupt and treasonous administration, and that is the Republican Party. I cannot make it any clearer, that we must have a powerful national narrative that shames and blames the Republican-led Congress and the Republican Party-at-large, for our affordability crisis, protecting pedophiles and a failed Iran war at a minimum. This requires the checkbook and network connections of the DNC. They have already proved themselves AWOL from leadership, so we’ll have to find the leadership ourselves. The rest we are capable of doing if we work together. Being a Republican that still supports the administration whether in congress or in our hometowns, must be made shameful. Nothing makes influence easier than having the truth on your side. Shameful is the truth in this case.

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What I’m talking about is Narrative Warfare or NW for short. I won’t do a deep dive on this as that I’ve written about it quite often in the past two and a half years, but will add a couple of links for those that wish for more in-depth background. The short answer though, is that NW is highly specialized and the most successful style of influence operations, with no close second. Professionally speaking, we cannot win at Narrative Warfare, so long as we are exclusively in a reactive mode. In the news, we often hear or read the term, “counternarratives,” but if all we have are counternarratives, it’s like playing great defense in a baseball game but having zero offense. You can’t win if you don’t score runs.

• Conned, the conversion of the GOP conservatives into right-wing extremists

• Without factoring "brainwashing" into the equation for 2024, we're doomed to another far-right, extremist administration, no matter what pollsters say.

For the past decade plus, the DNC has exclusively played defense. For example, during the 2024 election cycle, all we heard about in the media was immigration at the southern border and inflation. With the left having no narrative of their own about these two subjects, the media ran exclusively with the Republican narratives about both. When the media went looking for a story, the DNC had none, leaving the RNC to control what America was talking about. There are no narratives even now from the left alone or from the resistance altogether. No Kings demonstrations are great motivators but without their own narrative or narratives, lose their steam within 48 hours. NW requires sustained operations that include narratives being disseminated anywhere that voters live, work or play.

The GOP has an extensive narrative stable that they trot out on a daily They use code words, languages and in fact, coded narratives, often built onto their insane conspiracy theories they have absorbed since roughly 2012. Republicans that still vote for the party, have internalized all of their insane narratives, beginning largely with the Obama birth certificate conspiracy theory. Republicans believe these fairy tales fully, and most won’t change their opinions in our lifetime. This works exactly the same as radicalization of youth into cults or extremist organizations.

A long career in CT/ Counterterrorism has taught me that once someone is radicalized past a certain threshold, there is little chance of them fully recovering from their aberrant beliefs… ever. This is another hard data-point, that we must always keep in the back of our minds. Hardcore MAGA Republicans that have already voted for Trump three times, are most likely lost to family, friends and community forever. We may still break bread with them, but their political beliefs are now part of who they are or will become. I personally believe that this dynamic exists in roughly 25 - 30% of the American electorate.

In my analysis, the primary narratives that the DNC plus the resistance requires are; 1. Trump and his merry band of oligarchs and thugs, could not have done so much damage to us, unless the GOP-led congress, enabled it. 2. The GOP is responsible protecting pedophiles 3. The illegal Iran war is primarily about acquiring more oil and power for the 1% and while we the people suffer the costs.

All the DNC has to do, is to build narratives around these three points and deploy them at least as aggressively, as the Republican media machine disseminates their lies. This would give us an offense, where we once played only defense. What we must have for success, is to have America talking about what the resistance is focusing on, not what the Republicans are. If the resistance had a strategy, they could manage to acquire as much attention with their narratives as the right does with their conspiracy theories and outright lies. Think about small children competing for attention from a parent, teacher, coach or otherwise. The silent children receive only a fraction of the attention that the louder and more talkative children do.

Narratives do not need to be long or complicated. They simply need to be constructed by those who understand the principles of narrative. A well constructed narrative communicates meaning based on the identity of the audience and is not as is commonly understood, a story. A narrative is built on multiple stories that somewhat act as the chapters of a book. The plot tells us what the narrative is.

Let’s look for a moment at the three recommended narratives noted previously.

1. The Republicans in charge of congress have ignored their oaths to “protect and defend the constitution from all enemies and domestic. They instead have given the Executive Branch emergency powers and supported the administration exclusively, while they regularly violate our constitution. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson have ensured that congress abdicated their role in our system of checks and balances. They are enablers of Project 2025, that is stripping the legislative and judicial branches of government of their constitutional powers and placing the preponderance of them into the Executive Branch. This allows the White House to pretty much do as it pleases, especially with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts leading a SCOTUS right-wing super majority, that is bastardizing our constitution.

   

   Trump’s immunity decision, the allowance of racial profiling for Immigration operations, Citizens United and their persistent decisions that reward the billionaire class are just the tip of the iceberg in what I personally consider, professional or criminal malfeasance.

   1. Trump Is Violating the Constitution | American Civil Liberties Union

   2. Mazars and Vance, and President Trump’s Ongoing Assault on our Structural Constitution | ACS

   3. Breaking the Law | Brennan Center for Justice

   4. Trump’s 'Emergencies' Are Pretexts for Undermining the Constitution | Lawfare

   It was the Republicans in Congress that approved the Big Ugly Bill, that is doing so much harm to our nation and its working citizens while outrageously giving away our treasury to oligarchs and billionaires. Dramatic and senseless DOGE cuts, have dramatically denied or restricted us access to the very government services that our tax dollars pay for. Yes, the Republican Party has done all of this and so much more that imperils all of us. Again, we need to make enough noise about this version of the GOP if we want media to listen.

   With the constant government shutdowns, including the longest in our history plus the ongoing one regarding ICE and CBP, it is blatantly obvious that the Trump-era GOP cannot govern or more like, won’t govern. They control all three branches of government but still cannot manage to accomplish the basic requirements of governing. To make matters worse, we are knee-deep in the midterm election cycle and not one thing to relieve Americans from the affordability issues caused by the GOP-led congress, is being addressed. Besides groceries, housing costs and fuel, their willful destruction of the healthcare system, is a primary concern.

   Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

   "Health costs continue to top the public’s list of affordability worries, even as concerns about gas prices have risen in recent weeks. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of adults are worried about being able to afford health care costs, on par with the share who now worry about gas and transportation costs (64%) and outranking other economic concerns. In January 2026, prior to the start of the U.S. conflict with Iran, gasoline and transportation costs ranked at the bottom of household financial worries. Now, gas prices share the top spot with health care costs as the biggest financial worry adults face for themselves and their families."
   
   - KFF Health Tracking Poll: Health Care Costs and the Midterms
   - Audrey Kearney, Mardet Mulugeta, Alex Montero, Isabelle Valdes, Lunna        Lopes, and Ashley Kirzinger
   - April 29th, 2026

   

2. The issue of the Epstein files and how nearly all Republicans in congress are protecting them, is stomach churning to any and all decent human beings. It is an issue that is no longer a matter of guilty or not guilty but an issue of whether or not Republican voters will hold their noses and continue to support those guilty of some of the most heinous of crimes and most often against children. We must pin this issue to the lapels of every elected Republican until they are willing to support impeachment for Trump, Todd Blanche, Kash Patel and several other administration officials.

3. If we don’t hold them accountable, we will have failed as Americans and as moral human beings. If the Republicans in the administration won’t do their part, let the world know loudly, the names of every single one of them. Go straight to their social media accounts and do as I have been doing for a while now, ask them “why they are protecting pedophiles.” When they give a press conference, ask the question again. Hang signs in front of their home offices with the question painted in loud colors on signs. I believe that every single Republican congressional district should have billboards with these legislator’s faces and names alongside this question.

   

3. As if things weren’t bad enough between the US and our allies, the Iran War has made the situation far worse with Trump just yesterday announcing that he was withdrawing 5,000 of our troops from Germany, with far more being removed from Europe in the near future. From a national security perspective, we are now mostly alone in a very dangerous world. As that I’ve written to date, an eight-part series on the war in the past three weeks or so, I will not belabor the rest of the points here in this already, too long essay. The bottom-line though is that at the moment, we are not winning. We are also far away from achieving anything remotely close to what we already had with the Obama administration’s, Iran Deal.

3. For those looking for the full details of the war from the eight-part series, the links are below.

   Part I: The coming war with Iran - by Paul Cobaugh

   Part II: It’s just always about the oil - by Paul Cobaugh

   Part III: The Iran War: Criminal Malfeasance

   Part 4: the War with Iran leads to grave consequences on a local and global scale

   Part V: The Iran quagmire is becoming quicksand

   Part VI, the Iran War: Never say it cannot get worse.

   Part 7: The Iran War, Trump surrenders - by Paul Cobaugh

   The Iran War, Part VIII: The liars, cowards and thieves, looting our household budgets.

Today’s summary is relatively short and sweet. The overall point is that we must pointedly and perpetually do the work to make Americans see the truth, that the Republican Party cannot or will not govern and they are failing at doing anything at all to relieve the affordability issues straining American households. In order to do this, we must now pull out all of the stops to make ourselves heard across the spectrum of US media, and do it before the Republicans. We must also sustain our voices in media and never again return to the reactive only posture of the DNC.

What this comes down to is that we need all of those apathetic voters who tend to sit out elections. We will need every possible vote in order to overcome the variety of election “rigging” planned by the current administration. The other salient point is that if we put in the work to turn voters out and for the resistance, there is the potential to recover the House of Representatives and the Senate. If we can achieve this, we should have relative safety from the administration for Trump’s last two years in office. If we don’t, American democracy may not survive that long. There is no time to sit back and relax, no matter how positive the polls are.

At the end of the day, a Republican-led congress and the party itself should in my opinion, be our COG. Without control of congress, the administration will struggle to achieve any more debilitating structural devastation to our constitutional republic. Taking back both houses of congress is our insurance policy for safety and ultimately, our trump-card (pun intended) against any more significant harm from this administration. It’s also our ticket to getting some of the administration’s worst of the worst held accountable. Such success may not be the end of this corrupt and treasonous administration but, it sure will be the beginning of the end of this most un-American and dangerous administration.

After this is all over, it will still take a decade or more to put this phase of our history behind us. The sooner we get at it, the sooner we’ll be living an American life again.

Onward,

Paul

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TAT readers,

Today’s essay is a bit different. In many ways this collection of thoughts about the subjugation of the American people, some imposed and some self-imposed, is a stream of consciousness writing exercise. Just me ruminating over thoughts I have about the deep mess our nation is in. It’s the story of our nation’s descent into a hollow shell of its former self, or rather the hostile takeover of our republic by some of the world’s wealthiest men. The America I grew up in, could hardly be more different than what we witness today. It’s as if most Americans are dressed up in patriotic costumes for Halloween, but are either too apathetic or too addicted to the brainwashing babble of politicians, marketers and major corporations, to actually defend American Democracy.

Most Americans have never read the constitution and even fewer understand it. It’s really not that difficult as that our founders wanted a document that nearly every citizen could understand. In fact, both Jefferson and Madison clearly believed that the law should be clear enough so that everyone could understand it. Today’s SCOTUS, clearly doesn’t agree as that the right wing justices are perfectly willing to turn a basic document into a pretzel, in order to justify the court’s contortionist-like opinions that support Trump, Republicans and their oligarchs. Today’s conspiracy theory-laden right, dines exclusively on their fairly tales, while concurrently humiliating themselves in front of family, friends and communities, by repeating this most absurd nonsense. Some on the left are just as avoidant of reality, especially when it comes to Gaza and the Palestinian issue.

In the meantime, the reality of what America is and should be, has been largely lost or at least mothballed. Commercialism, the worship of celebrity and the willingness to believe in absurdities, has replaced the very basic civics and history classes we all experienced in elementary school through high school. There have been accomplices to this tragedy, almost exclusively from what at one time in US history, would have been called the “robber barons.” Today’s robber barons, exist in numbers increasing faster than the precipitous pace that our middle class is diminishing. Jobs once thought secure, are now often replaced by offshoring, automation and AI. Old-school tactics for saving money, planning for a future, educating our children and the all-important American dream of home ownership, are no longer relevant and in most cases, counterproductive.

"But the middle class has fallen behind on two key counts. The growth in income for the middle class since 1970 has not kept pace with the growth in income for the upper-income tier. And the share of total U.S. household income held by the middle class has plunged."

- The State of the American Middle Class
- Pew Research Center
- May 31st, 2024

None of this was the America I was born into. As a “baby boomer” I grew up in an America still swelling with pride in our democracy. Our successes in being a primary player in ridding the world of the fascism of the late 1930s and 1940s were a particular point of pride. We were united at home and with our allies, especially NATO throughout the Cold War, and reveled at the opportunity for real world peace after winning the Cold War against the Soviet Union. At the end of WW II, the GI bill, global primacy and burgeoning manufacturing held nearly unbridled optimism for most of America. Jobs were plentiful and nationally we represented the future due to our advances in science and technology. The world saw us as we preferred to see ourselves, ambitious, energetic and a global leader for democracy. America was a robust beacon to a world desperately seeking opportunity, democracy and safety.

"In that land the great experiment was to be made, by civilized man, of the attempt to construct society upon a new basis; and it was there, for the first time, that theories hitherto unknown, or deemed impracticable, were to exhibit a spectacle for which the world had not been prepared by the history of the past. 

– Alexis de Tocqueville
- Democracy in America 
- 1835 (Reeves translation)

We have forgotten who we were, not only in my lifetime but dating back to the earliest days of our “great experiment.” Behind those decades of pride and energetic forays into a brighter future, our Achilles Heel of apathy, materialism and tolerance of robber barrons, began to rear its ugly head again. We’ve been through the eras of oligarchs before, eventually reining them in before they could do as much damage as we currently see, with only one exception. The Confederacy, built on the planks of White Christian Nationalism, slavery, poor white labor and oligarchy, went to war with the union to save their un-American way of life. Today, we must again fight this war against a movement with their roots in the same ideology as the Confederacy, that I call, The four horsemen of the MAGA Apocalypse: Autocracy, Oligarchy, Christian Nationalism and Political Violence.

In roughly 1978 or 1979, along came Newt Gingrich and his “scorched earth” political style, headlined by the Moral Majority and later the Tea Party movement. Gingrich and the evolution from Moral Majority to Tea Party and now the MAGA movements, live by the mantra that says simply, “if the left wanted anything, it had to be rejected, no matter how much bipartisan support there was.” In 1980 Ronald Reagan came to office and thus began the GOP’s decades-long assault on the working classes, primarily via tax cuts to the wealthy. His “trickle down economics” were more of a slogan than a real economic strategy and which ultimately increased the deficit while expanding income inequality between the wealthy and everyone else. Legislation benefitting the elite wealth class then became all that the GOP was interested in, regardless of who got hurt. This hasn’t changed since.

"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

- Farewell Address 
- President George Washington
- Saturday, September 17, 1796

Like our only independent president, George Washington, I despise the concept of political parties. Still, we are now saddled with them and so have only a couple of choices on our ballots. After SCOTUS’ Citizens United’s decision, dark money began to outright buy our elections. Now, that same dark money has also purchased and locked away in some deep dark prison cell, what it means to be an American. All they care about is winning so that they can continue to profit wildly from the influence they have purchased on the floor of Congress. Without the understanding of what it means to be an American based on our founding values, we are ceasing to represent the identity of the world’s most successful constitutional republic.

Nations like people, endure based on their identity and their ability to retain it. Ukraine’s success against Russia is a good example. Throughout our history, our identity could best be described as, hard-working, innovative and fiercely independent. We respect the “up by your bootstraps” success, underdogs, those who embody our founding principles, defiance against outside aggressors and even domestic ones, such as the Civil War Confederacy. With the exception of the GOP siding with Russia during and since the 2016 election, America has always rallied and unified to defend our nation and our values. Pre-WW II, our nation was like today, severely under strain by the Great Depression and similarly divided along racial, religious and class divides etc.

Still, after December 7th, 1941 and the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan, nearly all of this divisiveness evaporated, almost overnight. Men committed suicide if they were deemed “4-F” or ineligible for military service. Americans of all backgrounds contributed to the war effort from “liberty gardens” to “Rosie the Riveter” women working in manufacturing. Women, minorities and all ethnicities clamored to support the war effort against the fascist Axis powers aligned against the free world. The US military desegregated and women served openly in the military. Our strength came from that specific American identity that thumbed our noses at bullies and aggressors in defense of liberty. That resilient unity, was America. What has changed in the Trump era? This is the question of the day and has a wide variety of answers. Let’s take a look at a couple of the most significant.

First of all, post WW II with GI Bill money for college home mortgages etc., far more Americans began to participate in the opportunity that most working Americans had little access to pre-war. Homes became more comfortable and with an avalanche of modern conveniences like central heating, washing machines and more. Sears and J.C. Penny stores dominated urban and rural America, enticing consumers with an ever-expanding bevy of new comfort items, styles and entertainment. Along with the entertainment, especially with the advent of television in more and more homes, access to news, entertainment and sports came along with advertising via mass media where before, only radio and newspapers thrived. Marketing in particular became far more cunning and often dishonest.

Who can forget the commercials bragging about the benefits of smoking? It didn’t just stop with cigarettes either. Marketers have always looked for any advantage to acquire market shares via any method or tactic, ethical or not. Today, just like in journalism, marketing ethics are more lip-service than not. In marketing, just like in my profession, influence operations, there are systems, tactics and strategies that are in no way ethical unless wielded against an avowed enemy. Americans are not enemies of marketers or journalists, but in our current nation we are treated as such. We are there only to be used for political or financial gain.

Politicians and political parties, wield all manner of modern tactics and resources to “sell” Americans on their ideology. Algorithms, trolls, bots, overtly dishonest campaign ads, silencing dissent etc. are just a handful of modern tactics. Even Google Search has taken a significant downturn that denies us the quality search results we could use to validate information. By using these unethical mass-media tactics and resources, they can make people believe in absurdities and in fact, brainwash their audiences, as we can see from the bizarre conspiracy theories that define today’s Republican party. The danger of those believing in absurdities was best expressed by a brilliant and prolific 18th century French Enlightenment writer and philosopher, named Voltaire.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
― Voltaire

Secondly, someone must pay for all of this dishonest marketing of politicians and products. Oligarchs or the 1% pay the bills of those who deceive us, and at our expense. A staggering amount of this elite wealth class are the ones with the strategies to acquire not only more wealth, but power. As we now see in every part of our lives, we are paying more for less and this includes politics. For example, today’s Republicans consistently vote against their own self interests. They vote to lose their healthcare, pay more for groceries, pay higher taxes and all the while we are concurrently losing more of our constitutional rights. Bought and paid for politicians do the dirty work of these oligarchs by writing laws favorable to the wealthy over the essential needs of the rest of us.

Finally, there are only six or seven multi-national media conglomerates that control most of what we see, read, watch and hear. They ensure that we are distracted by reality shows, Tik-Tok and other influencers offering little or nothing of value to the human fabric of our nation. The pundits that tell us what to think, are a dime-a-dozen and are merely parroting the scripts they’ve been handed by CEOs, politicians, political parties and so on. They create the narratives that have replaced facts, for a very large portion of American audiences.

Many of the narratives of the right have to do with false patriotism. Historical revisionism is alive and well in today’s GOP, where they’ve basically replaced American history and our values, with a version best described as God, Guns and Trump. I cringe when I read or hear a Republican politician that makes some outrageous claims about our constitution or history, just to make their followers believe they are the true patriots. And yet, where is the vigorous rebuttal from constituents? We all watched the January 6th armed insurrection on our TV screens, phones and laptops, yet tens of millions of Republican voters will tell you with a straight face that there was no armed insurrection. This is the type of “absurdity” that should frighten every one of us.

Patriotism is a team sport and in today’s America, also a contact sport. We must be willing to stand toe-to-toe with the thuggery under contract to the MAGA GOP. In order to do this, we must reacquaint ourselves with who we are as Americans. As earlier noted, our identity as Americans hasn’t disappeared, but is lying dormant. Reacquainting ourselves with our historical and traditional identity, will once again rekindle the flame of liberty demonstrated on battlefields around the world, in the halls of congress and in our communities.

In order to find ourselves, we must see, read and hear news through a filter of truth and wisdom. We have known for nearly 250 years who we are and until the Trump era, it didn’t take much for us to remember and act on our patriotic identity. Those instincts are our most powerful weapons against tyranny, but first we must all get off of our couches and participate on a level not seen since WW II.

"I need not repeat the figures. The facts speak for themselves.... These men could not have been armed and equipped as they are had it not been for the miracle of production here at home. The production which has flowed from the country to all the battlefronts of the world has been due to the efforts of American business, American labor, and American farmers, working together as a patriotic team."

- President Franklin D. Roosevelt 
- Navy Day speech
- October 27, 1944

Americans at home and abroad pitched in to support the war effort, all the way from children to all adults. Rationing, salvaging metals to be recycled into military products, the liberty gardens and countless other government sponsored programs were worked by those at home, who could contribute their own unique skills and talents to the war effort. It wasn’t uncommon to hear the phrase, “don’t you know there’s a war on” in the streets, kitchens or businesses all across the country. This is the type of universal commitment that beckons to us now, as we persist in fighting our war against our own fascist regime. We’ve done this before and we know how. Waking up our historical American identity, is the surest way to manifest the same spirit of liberty that saw us through years of war, and on the heels of the Great Depression.

"The war effort on the "Home Front" required sacrifices and cooperation. "Don't you know there's a war on?" was a common expression. Rationing became part of everyday life. Americans learned to conserve vital resources. They lived with price controls, dealt with shortages of everything from nylons to housing, and volunteered for jobs ranging from air raid warden to Red Cross worker."

- Take A Closer Look: America Goes to War
- The National WW II Museum

I won’t belabor the concept that we must all work together to recover our liberty. We all know, but have somehow let these memories to lapse. We must be our own leaders because it is apparent that we are the cavalry. We still have little to nothing from the DNC. We have millions of Americans looking for leadership but must accept that at the moment, none is on the horizon. If our preferred choices cannot or will not lead, we must pick up the baton and lead as well. We can do this together or individually. The blueprint for success is written across the pages of our history books and lives in the memories of those who survived WW II. They are our advisors.

The goals of our movement are simple, and that is the narrative of our fight. We simply wish to restore our republic to a functioning state, where we are all equal before the law, don’t sell our souls to oligarchs and demand fair laws from our elected representatives. We must know our national values and act on them. Extend your hands to those still too timid to leave their sofas. We need them. Take at least one or two actions a day in support of the resistance, even if it is only to call an elected representative, write a comment on some administration official’s social media post or block-walk for candidates and causes. Like in our past, we must sacrifice a little time ,in order to restore and protect our republic. We’ve got this if we all just do a little. If WW II or our War of Independence is any guide, most will do far more than a little bit. It’s just who we are as Americans.

I’ll leave you now with one thought; I’m proud to stand next to every one of you dedicated to this cause. America is our home and we intend to keep it as our founders intended… free.

Onward

Paul

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TAT readers,

First and foremost, thank you for your patience these past few days while I took a short break. An opportunity arose for me to spend these days with my grandchildren who live far away. With our airlines operating far below any level of real dependability, I made this visit a road trip. The truth is, I was raised with and still find time alone on the road not only peaceful, but useful for pondering serious issues, such as the myriad of acute threats facing our nation and in fact, our world. In many ways, what I experienced on the road became the inspiration for today’s essay, the 8th in a series about the administration’s ill-conceived war with Iran. The focus today is the deep impact that this war, compounded by a year and a half, of criminal mismanagement of our government, has had on the day-to-day lives of all Americans.

It is no secret that the painful and so-called “affordability issues” facing most families, have been steadily increasing since January 20th of 2025. Now that we are engaged in an unconstitutional war with Iran, those painful issues have seen the administration and the ruling Republican Party, throw the proverbial “salt in the wounds” of most citizens, their families and especially their household budgets. Via decades in business prior to returning to the Army to finish my military career, I have long understood the difficulty for citizens to correlate major national and global events to their own daily lives.

I write now to better help readers understand that there are direct and often painful personal correlations to these high-profile events. As a spoiler alert, I want everyone to know there is more pain ahead with little to no relief anywhere in sight. We are being robbed by the “liars, cowards and thieves” in government, associated oligarchy and the alleged experts permeating our daily online and other news experiences. As the title, Truth about Threats clearly states, I am here to distill complex situations into digestible narratives that illustrate the truths that our media and pundits won’t. Unlike the news channels and political pundits, I have no partisan axe to grind. I have zero corporate affiliations or other entanglements that skew my opinions away from truth. My north star is our constitution and the true American principles defined by that sacred document.

As we continue to wade even deeper into the quicksand of another Middle Eastern war, it is imperative that voters have a much clearer view of what is at stake, if only to better protect themselves. To date, this series has been an attempt to give readers exactly that view. As I have mentioned in the previous essays, this topic is beyond complex and so for those who’ve not read the first seven essays, they are linked here below and preceding the body of today’s essay.

Onward

• Part I: The coming war with Iran - by Paul Cobaugh

• Part II: It’s just always about the oil - by Paul Cobaugh

• Part III: The Iran War: Criminal Malfeasance

• Part 4: the War with Iran leads to grave consequences on a local and global scale

• Part V: The Iran quagmire is becoming quicksand

• Part VI, the Iran War: Never say it cannot get worse.

• Part 7: The Iran War, Trump surrenders - by Paul Cobaugh

Background since Part VII was published on April 11th.

Eleven days ago, we were told that we had entered into a ceasefire with Iran, despite there being no evidence of any written agreement. This is SOP or “standard operating procedure” for this administration and their party. We the people, have been mostly in the dark about this war from even before the first munitions were released. In fact, this administration treats all information as gold to be hoarded. Their coercion of all corporate media to only report the little “good news” about the war and refusal to inform the public with truth, has those without deep experience and connections to the national security community, largely in the dark. It’s a dangerous time for Americans to be “in-the-dark” about the threats to their daily lives.

In the time between the last installment and today, little of significance has occurred regarding the war itself. In the ripple effects created by the war, there have been significant developments in the global order, the economies of most global nations and direct ramifications for Americans here at home. Abroad, we’ve seen lip-service to ceasefire talks from J.D. Vance and his fellow henchmen, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Zero progress has been made and worst of all, Iran still holds all the “trump-cards”… pun intended. Even in today’s Times of Israel, there is an article stating that the Trump administration’s messaging about the war and ceasefire talks has been “muddled” and unhelpful to any resolution. In the meantime, Trump continues to bluster nonsensical threats against Iran. Iran and all true experts regarding the region, haven’t stopped laughing at these threats, despite none of this being a laughing matter.

There are no major agreements on the horizon. Mr. “Art of the Deal” is clueless about negotiating with anyone in the Middle East and Jared Kushner, Mike Huckabee and Steve Witkoff are sure as hell clueless. Negotiation in the region is an artform, foreign to most Americans. I have decades of experience dealing with those in the region both in business and via military engagement. Such negotiations are unlike anything we experience here in the US and all of them involve significant risks to the losers in such negotiations. Trump’s Mafia-styled and heavy-handed tactics are all he knows. None of these coercive tactics have any resonance in the region. To be frank, regardless of ethnicity, religion or otherwise, most indigenous populations in the region, simply laugh at Trump’s worthless threats.

Outside of violating even more international laws regarding war, Trump has no cards at all. Threatening the “end of a civilization” or destroying all of Iran’s civilian infrastructure, are both overt and serious violations of all international law regarding armed conflict. The US under this administration, is a pariah to most of the world. The only option left to the US is to put massive numbers of troops on the ground and hope for the best. Even if we won, Iran still has the wherewithal to undo pretty much all of the region’s oil infrastructure. In fact, they have threatened to do so in response to Trump’s boisterous and impotent threats. This would toss the global economy into freefall. Such a freefall would make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a minor hiccup in the global economy.

"WASHINGTON—US President Donald Trump wants the Iran war to be a “win” for the United States. It could be—if Iran gives up building a nuclear weapon, opens the Strait of Hormuz, ends its support for proxy militias, and accepts limits on missiles and drones.

However, on March 30, Trump said that if there is no deal on these issues, the United States “will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!).” Two days later, in a primetime national address, Trump said, “If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric-generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.” 

But strikes on Iranian infrastructure would not constitute a winning strategy for the United States. Iran’s peculiar sense of symmetry means that Tehran will almost certainly retaliate by attacking Arab Gulf states’ energy and drinking water infrastructure—with potentially catastrophic consequences. Moreover, given how Iran’s leaders think, infrastructure strikes are unlikely to get Iran to lift its blockade of the strait."

- Attacking Iran’s energy and water infrastructure is not a winning strategy
- The Atlantic Council
- By Thomas S. Warrick 
- April 3, 2026 6:21 p.m. ET

So there we have it, Iran does indeed hold the trump-cards and they know it. So do Iran’s backers, Russia and China. This cruel and greedy administration have cut off America from her century-old allies at NATO, the EU and others around the world. We are alone except for Trump’s penchant for saving Putin. Even Putin though is focused exclusively on saving himself and Russia and who has often humiliated Trump on the global stage. The four most powerful militaries and economies on earth are the US, China, India and to some extent, Russia and should they decide that a US led by a mafia-like extortionist is a threat to their economies, there is the distinct potential for an anti-US alliance. With Iranian fossil fuels being critical to the economies of all the above, they will have no choice but to unify to keep the global economy on sound footing. With this said, now we must look at what an isolationist and cruel US is doing to global economies, including ours. This is where warning lights are flashing red for the overwhelming majority of US households.

So what does all of this background have to do with your household budgets?

Step one is to acknowledge that the war on Iran was quite far from the beginning of our affordability crisis. For most Americans, budgets have been tight since the COVID pandemic. What so many called inflation during the run-up to 2024 election, was in my opinion, mislabeled. Yes, things cost more and in some cases, far more but except for the first year of COVID, I often wrote during those days that what we were experiencing was price-gouging by oligarchical corporations rather than inflation. I won’t write much today on the details of why I believed this, but will include below a couple of links from that period, that explain in detail.

• It's not Inflation, its price-gouging by corporate Oligarchs, who are also, the largest campaign donors.

• Oligarchy and its evil offspring... price-gouging

The Trump campaign in 2024 employed the false narrative of “inflation” during the campaign, promising to lower prices across the board if elected. Well, as any US family knows, affordability is an ongoing serious issue and is worsening. Inflation jumped to 3.3% last month alone, and largely due to the war with Iran.

Another way to look at affordability besides inflation data is via CPI or the Consumer Price Index.

“The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services. Indexes are available for the U.S. and various geographic areas. Average price data for select utility, automotive fuel, and food items are also available.”

- US Bureau of Labor Statistics

What this data is telling us is that yes, there are serious affordability issues for most Americans. As the chart below indicates, the CPI has been mostly declining since we began getting control of COVID in 2023 and since this January, has spiked upwards significantly. Most economists predict it will continue to climb and dramatically so should the Strait of Hormuz remain closed for an extended period of time.

With wages stagnant and and the income disparity between the ultra wealthy and the other 90% of Americans continually increasing, there is little or no hope for higher wages to offset inflation on our horizon. In a long report from the Brooking Institution at the end of 2025, that data paints a dim picture for the middle and lower classes.

"The nation’s affordability crisis has not spared middle-class families, one-third of which struggle to afford basic necessities such as food, housing, and child care.

Across the 160 U.S. metro areas studied, at least 20% of middle-class earners cannot afford to live in that place, after adjusting for local income ranges and price variations.

The share of struggling middle-class families varies by race: 27% of white families, 39% of Black families, 41% of Asian American families, 46% of Native American families, and 50% of Latino or Hispanic families are unable to afford basic necessities.

- In every corner of the country, the middle class struggles with affordability
- The Brookings Institution
- Hannah Stephens and Andre M. Perry
- December 2, 2025

As noted, the Brookings report was December of 2025 and with the war beginning February 28th, things have gone downhill from there. They will continue to do so without adult intervention at the highest levels.

As mentioned at the beginning of today’s essay, I have just completed a road trip to and from California from Texas. Long road trips give those who are observant some decisive insights into the state of affairs for working Americans. For example, gas was terribly expensive, but diesel was roughly two dollars a gallon more than gasoline. The reason this matters is that nearly everything we buy somehow is moved by truck, all across the nation. Last December, diesel was roughly $3.50 per gallon and now it hovers between $5.50 and $6 dollars per gallon. These significant transportation costs are then passed along to us, the consumers. The 19% increase in fuel costs represent the biggest monthly jump since records began being collected in 1967.

While that much of what we purchase off of supermarket or retail shelves was transported before the war, new shipments will reflect the large jump in fuel prices caused by the war. As for increases in food prices, the Persian Gulf, now controlled by Iran, contributes another immovable obstacle to lowering food prices. Roughly a third of the world’s fertilizer comes from the Persian Gulf. Spring planting across the nation is at risk for farmers because of this issue. Even if farmers can get the fertilizer they need, the costs will be far in excess of what they can afford, necessitating that they take the risk of borrowing at higher interest rates, just to be able to plant. It may take another month or so before we begin seeing these price increases but we will see them. The ripple-effect from the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, means more pain at the cash register for all of us.

With the bulk of the US middle class having to make hard budget decisions at home, the lack of expendable income impacts nearly every aspect of our economy. Consumer confidence is now at its lowest point since records have been kept.

"The Consumer Sentiment reading from the University of Michigan's Survey of Consumers sank 11% to an all-time low of 47.6 in early April 2026, far below both market expectations of 52. That was 9% lower than last year.

Consumers “across age, income, and political party all posted setbacks in sentiment, as did every component of the index, reflecting the widespread nature of this month’s fall,” the survey director said in a release.

“Assessments of personal finances declined about 11%, with consumers expressing a substantial increase in concerns over high prices and weaker asset values,” the release added. “Open ended comments show that many consumers blame the Iran conflict for unfavorable changes to the economy."

- Inflation surged following start of Iran war, March CPI report shows
- USA Today
- Andrea Riquier Rachel Barber Jessica Guynn Betty Lin-Fisher
- April 10th, 2026

One last issue that exacerbates affordability for US families is the issue of healthcare. Although not linked directly to the Iran war, most consider increasing healthcare costs the most significant issue on their affordability list. With over a million losing their healthcare since passage of the Big Ugly Bill and another 14 million projected to lose their healthcare if the Republican-led Congress fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, even more stable middle class families will be at risk for being able to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. Across the board, Americans cannot afford their current lives. The increased costs from the war simply make an untenable situation, far worse and yet, the administration, GOP-led Congress and their billionaire enablers don’t give a damn.

To rub salt into the wounds of struggling families, a select few within and closely associated with the administration, have made more than a billion dollars in suspicious, perfectly timed trades. Enormous defense contracts to administration insiders with hastily created business entities, reek of overt nepotism as well. With DOJ impotent due to corrupt leadership, firings and an unwillingness to prosecute anyone in or associated with the administration leaves a vile taste in the mouths of those laboring just to make ends meet.

There are plenty more issues that reinforce my points regarding the travesty of what is being done to the working Americans, who support our nation with their toils and taxes, but by now I believe that we all get the point. It’s now time to wrap up this sobering essay.

As noted earlier at the beginning, I write these essays because I believe that everyone one of us deserves to know the whole picture about what is occurring to our nation. Most news media in the Trump/ MAGA era won’t publish the comprehensive stories for fear of upsetting the administration. We struggle to acquire any facts at all from our own government and the administration’s extortion of media conglomerates, prevents them from shining too much negative reporting on the overt and pervasive criminality oozing from it. Republican politicians shamelessly stand in front of cameras and tell us that we didn’t see what we saw and didn’t hear what we heard. We are devoid of any sense of reality from the very government that we pay for and that the so-called 1% don’t.

Those taxes we pay are now being used to pay for a war we didn’t want or need, and that in my opinion was for oil and power. The costs of this war far exceed what we are actually spending on it. As we learned in this essay, the ripple effects emanating from the ensuing calamity are having a painfully direct impact onto the lives of middle and lower class Americans. To make matters worse, there is no obvious end anywhere in sight. Even should a perfect agreement be made tomorrow between all of the warring parties, the damage is already done. In recent remarks, Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA officer made it very clear that it will take well over a year to put the global economy back onto stable footing.

Opening the Strait of Hormuz is the least of the problems if a sustainable peace can be achieved. The damage to regional infrastructure will persist for a couple of years and the reputational damage to the US will last generations. We are now a pariah to the world. This war will negatively impact global US business and commerce interests for at least a generation. As discussed in previous essays, our national security is more at risk now, than at any time since our Civil War. These are long-term concerns but at the moment, we must focus on putting an end to the cruel, selfish greed of this criminal administration before they can do any more damage to our already fragile constitutional republic.

We have little immediate say in the prosecution of this war or its outcome. We will though pay the price as we go about our daily lives, whether it’s at the supermarket, gas pump or our jobs. The light at the end of this tunnel will be the midterm elections. We will even have to fight to win those, especially with the Democratic Party missing in action six months before these all important elections. As sobering as all of this sounds, we do have one ace-in-the-hole, American tradition. Part of American identity, is to stubbornly succeed when the odds are stacked against us. Few nations love an underdog the way the Americans do. We’re not just any underdog either. We’re scrappy, well-seasoned and have 250 years of experience standing up to authoritarian bullies and winning. It will still require more work than we can now imagine, but if we behave as our patriotic predecessors and channel their tenacity, we can do this.

Returning for just a moment to visiting with my grandchildren, it’s their future that I must commit to defending. I have no doubt that all of you feel the same for the future of your loved ones. Protecting liberty for the oppressed is also part of our patriotic DNA. We must not fail.

Onward,

Publius Redux

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TAT readers,

I will be blunt, we’ve surrendered to Iran. All that will change as so-called “negotiations” go forward in Pakistan, are the details of some potentially final agreement. The bottom-line though is that the US gains are minimal and Iran, supported by Russia and China still holds leverage over the US and the world, via controlling the Straits of Hormuz. In the first six parts of this series, we’ve dug deeply into many of the complex layers of issues surrounding the current war. Today, I will offer some of the notable developments but apply more focus towards how the war has shaped the previously discussed, “new world order,” heralded by Putin immediately after Trump’s election win, in November of 2024.

Although there’s a great deal to unpack in this essay, I will also rely on the links to the previous six essays, to offer deeper insights to those who may not have seen them when first published. As with most geo-political or strategic events, there are countless layers to consider, and the Iran War is one such event… on steroids. The war lies at the intersection of global commerce, energy markets, former Cold War tension, posturing by the world’s largest powers and economies, millennium-old religious tensions and even a prominent battlefield between global liberty and authoritarianism. This my friends is just the short-list.

Onward

Links to the previous parts of this series

• Part I: The coming war with Iran - by Paul Cobaugh

• Part II: It’s just always about the oil - by Paul Cobaugh

• Part III: The Iran War: Criminal Malfeasance

• Part 4: the War with Iran leads to grave consequences on a local and global scale

• Part V: The Iran quagmire is becoming quicksand

• Part VI, the Iran War: Never say it cannot get worse.

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Overview

At the end of February, the US joined Israel in a weeks long assault on Iran. While that Israel had due cause, we still have no idea why the US participated in an active role. There was no imminent threat, no ballistic missile threat, no sanctions threats nor any other compelling reasons at the time. As I discussed in Part II, there’s strong case to be made that this dangerous and lawless administration, was pursuing both oil and the power of having a dominant presence over the Strait of Hormuz, which impacts every nation on earth in one fashion or another.

The primary successes for both Israel and the US, have been in the diminishment of Iran’s military infrastructure, which has the potential, though yet unsubstantiated, to mitigate the endless list of atrocities perpetrated by Iran globally. Still though, Iran has clearly demonstrated that they are militarily resilient and even dangerous, as the ramifications of their assaults across the Gulf at the Arab Gulf oil states clearly shows. The damage to oil infrastructure, military bases, commerce and access to 20% of the world’s oil, has wreaked havoc on global markets, undermined critical international commerce and imposed even deeper inflation onto many of our fellow US citizens and global citizens. All of these citizens are now held hostage to greed, power, criminal intentions and a complete lack of caring for any of us, except the elite wealth classes.

As we stand right now, we are told that there’s a ceasefire, while that no one has apparently seen any documentation of such. There is apparently little to no serious coordination going on with Israel, other than a last minute call from the White House for Israel to also implement a ceasefire against aggressive, terrorist Hezbollah fighters in Southern Lebanon, who were raining terror down on Israel for the past few weeks. I know this first-hand because I regularly speak with one of my daughters, living in Israel’s north. She has been in and out of bomb shelters regularly, ever since the war began. Still, most western media dishonestly blames Israel for fighting against terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah, who’ve attacked the Jewish state incessantly for decades. I may have a professional disagreement or two with a couple of Israel’s tactics and their far-right extremist governing coalition, but I do not besmirch her rights to self-defense.

Now, let’s get into some of the primary points regarding the new geo-political alignment of the world’s major powers. Spoiler alert, all have either outright autocracies or have deeply flawed democracies. Yes, the US is one of these. The others are in hierarchical order of power, China, the US, Russia and India. As you can see, at this point in time, the US is largely a stand-alone nation and mostly devoid of allies. China has Russia and to a limited degree, India as well. Iran is important to all three. In many other ways, the US is now an ally of Putin and is even now cooperating more with China, in some quiet but disturbing ways.

The “new world order,” Putin-style

What we must come to terms with is that the old world order, largely defined as East vs. West or democracy vs. the communism of the Cold War is dead, never to be resurrected. After the Soviet Union imploded, the world was in flux for a couple of decades, with major powers looking at what a new alignment would look like. After WW II, the world existed on what is called, “The Rules-Based, International Order” or RBIO. Circa 2014, Russia’s invasion of Crimea set the stage for what would become a new Russian philosophy regarding sovereignty, global power and basically, who would rule the world. What we are seeing now is the logical progression of Putin’s favorite sovereignty concepts. The players are the US, Russia, China and to some extent, maybe India.

 "The concept of a multipolar oligarchy leads to the Russian concept that true sovereignty is possessed by only a few great powers; the sovereignty of states it views as dependent on great powers is limited. The territory of true sovereigns and those states under Russian protection is sacrosanct and can be defended by force; for the others, it is impermissible to regain territory that is “in dispute” by force. As an example of the former, consider the lengths to which Russia has gone to protect Syria’s use of armed force against its own population, whereas the sovereignty of former Soviet states such as Azerbaijan, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine must be negotiated."

- Russia at the United Nations: Law, Sovereignty, and Legitimacy
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Philip Remler
- January 22, 2020

This Putinesque view of sovereignty, is what we are watching materialize, right before our very eyes. The war with Iran plays an important role for Russia, China, India and Iran. The war also has shown the limits of US power. From the beginning of military powered flight, there has been an argument by air forces that they don’t require ground or maritime forces to win a war. The proof of this concept’s failure is written all over Iran, in the devastation without subjugation of the Iranian Terrorist regime. We learned the same lessons in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, etc. Still, the absurdity of believing you can accomplish regime change in a heavily defended, ideologically supercharged regime, is sheer madness. US and Israeli intelligence had already concluded before beginning the bombing, that regime change wasn’t in the cards.

The evidence to date indicates that Russia will become the primary sovereign for Europe, Syria and likely will retain Iran due to their intrinsic value in supplying Putin’s military. Still, Putin’s reach is severely limited now that his military has become a laughing stock in Ukraine. Just when some progress was being made on undermining the Russian economy via sanctions, along comes the Iran war. Now Putin is projected to make up to $10B more per month in oil revenue, meaning Russia’s current financial crisis appears to be survivable and downright profitable. But Putin still has Trump as his “ace-in-the-hole.” Whenever things have been tough for Putin’s foreign policy, somehow Trump’s administration seems to come to the rescue.

"But just as the economic downturn appeared set to force Putin to make difficult choices – perhaps having to concede ground in Ukraine peace talks – the US-Israeli war on Iran gifted Putin a huge win.

In the near term, this will serve as a get out of jail card for Putin. Higher oil and energy prices, and the US decision to ease sanctions on Russian oil, will bolster budget and balance of payments inflows to Russia." 

- The Iran war has been an economic gift for Putin
- Chatham House
- Timothy Ash
- April 10th, 2026

The fact that the Trump administration plays the occasional tough guy on Russia, close watchers will see both leaders with fixed gazes on some future target. I believe this target to be a world divided into the sovereign oligarchies of only a handful of fully sovereign nations. Each will manage several nations with lesser sovereignty rights and always subject to military intervention by primary sovereigns. The way things have been realigning, it appears Russia will be the primary sovereign oligarch from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, including all of Europe. The US gets the western hemisphere and China, all of Asia with potentially India occupying a unique role above secondary sovereign nations, but not equal to the big three.

We’ve seen ample evidence of this new world order from the Trump administration with their attack and administrative takeover of Venezuela, the blockade of Cuba, incessant threats against Greenland and this is merely the short list. There are examples from the Arctic to the tip of Argentina’s and Chile’s Patagonian region. Russia is still attempting but losing steam in Ukraine while China has made her typical, quieter moves on the strategic chessboard. If anyone is a “big” winner in the Iran war, it is China.

China now is allowed special dispensation to navigate the Strait of Hormuz, in order to acquire the fossil fuels she needs for her manufacturing sector. Depending on which source you read, Iran provides between 13-15% of China’s energy resources. Add to this that Xi has been banking deeply discounted Russian oil by storing it in his oil reserves. Deeply discounted Russian oil is available to Xi due to China coming to Putin’s rescue when he was desperately in need in Ukraine and at home. It doesn’t end there either.

"Meantime, China and Russia are sitting on the sidelines. Why? China is dependent on Iran, which supplies 13 percent of China’s oil imports at discounted prices. Since 2021, Iran has been locked into a 25-year cooperation agreement with Beijing, securing $400 billion of oil at below-market prices in exchange for Chinese investment and security cooperation. Russia, for its part, has relied on Iran as its most important Middle Eastern partner since Western sanctions on Russia began in 2014. Both countries had been propping up Tehran financially, militarily, and diplomatically for years."

- How Russia and China are winning the war in Iran 
- PETERSON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
- Elina Ribakova
- March 30, 2026

The claimed US and Iranian ceasefire talks are now being held in Pakistan. Pakistan is very much in debt to China due to being the host nation for the crown jewel of Xi’s China Dream Strategy, built along the spine of his BRI or Belt and Road Initiative. That jewel is called CPEC, China Pakistan Economic Corridor. This is a series of infrastructure investments from China running the length of Pakistan and terminating at the port of Gwadar, roughly 20 miles from the border with Iran. CPEC’s importance to Xi is significant despite a rough go of developing CPEC due to Pakistan’s myriad of protests, inefficient bureaucracy and ongoing terrorist resistance in Baluchistan.

On the other side of the Iranian and Pakistani border, India has also built a port at Chabahar, designed to foment trade and to provide critical access to middle eastern oil from the Persian Gulf, especially Iran. With China footing the bill for massive CPEC investment in Pakistan, she now enjoys significant leverage over her. Pakistan has long had a deep relationship with middle eastern Muslim states and Xi is banking on that influence to deliver an Iran war peace plan favorable to China. Meanwhile, the US enters the negotiations with no cards, no strategy and being led and supported by greedy and ideologically compromised imbeciles like J.D. Vance, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff.

At the moment, of the three major powers, the US, Russia and China, it is Xi that is in the catbird seat. He has reach, leverage and has managed to keep a lower profile throughout the past few weeks. So far, Xi and Putin have escaped from major public scrutiny, despite their assistance to Iran, to include targeting information of US military targets. As I am writing this, I notice a news update that shares that China will now be providing Iran with new, advanced air defense systems in a few weeks. These are notably more dangerous systems for our air crews to deal with. Apparently Iran has allies while the current US administration enjoys insulting ours. Just recently, Trump is back to discussing leaving NATO, declaring that they are doing nothing to help with the war that Trump started.

So as we enter negotiations led by Vance, let’s take a moment to add another datapoint to Trump and the GOP leadership’s cooperation with Putin. This week, Vance was in Hungary, campaigning for Viktor Orban’ the Hungarian extreme right-wing Prime Minister and acolyte of Putin. Orban’ is the darling of the MAGA GOP and has been involved with CPAC for years, often as a keynote speaker. It was Republican leadership that has worked with Orban’, often with GOP congressional reps to end aid for Ukraine.

We’ve covered a great deal in this essay and so it’s time to wrap this up with a coherent narrative of where we are regarding Iran and the Trump administration’s cooperation with Russia. With China now being the senior partner in the Russia/ Chinese relationship, cooperation with Putin is tantamount to cooperating with China. This can be seen in other ways as well, considering the administration’s recent announcement that it would sell some of our most sophisticated computer chips to China, something unthinkable to all other modern administrations. Add to this that the administration is now also working on deals with China regarding the rare earth minerals, critical to technology development.

Summary

There is no reason to believe that the US won or is winning anything related to the White House’s war on Iran. As noted earlier, the best that can be said is that we have diminished Iran’s military network and infrastructure enough to keep them from being a regional powerhouse for a couple of years. On the other hand, Iran has come through the war to date, as a resilient regime with quiet but powerful counterweights to US power. This only enhances those adversaries. Working with Putin and tangentially Xi, while both are responsible for advancing Iran’s ability to not only survive the war but raise the odds against our troops by providing targeting information to Iran.

China is the biggest winner and Xi also has significant leverage over Pakistan, where negotiations are being held. Without NATO and other allies, we are alone in the world. This degrades our national security acutely. With China now in a power position and US munitions prepositioned in Pacific Command taken for use in Iran, Xi now has his best chance in decades to recover Taiwan. The US would be severely limited by lack of critical munitions and a reluctance of former allies to go to war alongside of us in the Pacific. The US is no longer trustworthy as a reliable ally. Russia’s potential threat to the US is also limited because she has had her military decimated. Still, Russia and China make for a powerful set of adversaries.

"The US-Iran war has called this entire model into question. Politically, the war has raised new doubts about America’s commitment to European security and to Ukraine. Europeans’ unwillingness to participate in the US and Israeli military campaign has increased the Trump administration’s resentment towards NATO. If Trump acts on his pledge to ‘remember’ Europe’s ‘betrayal’, he could request a faster withdrawal of US personnel from key NATO posts, or reassess the US force posture in Europe."

-  Assessing the damage: What the Iran war really means for Europe’s defence
- European Union Institute for Security Studies
- Luigi Scazzieri, Giuseppe Spatafora
- April 9, 2026

As the new world order comes more into focus, we are faced with a harrowing vision of our world being carved up into pieces controlled by a handful of powerful authoritarian nations. Still, the leaders of these nations are all hungry for power and global domination in the long run. In fact, Xi’s China Dream strategy, calls for China to become the regional hegemon by 2025 and achieve global hegemony by 2049. If the old adage, “there’s no honor among thieves” holds true, it would be hard to imagine that the three power-hungry authoritarians in question, could cooperate as co-world leaders for long.

So the US is faced with two weighty issues; removing this administration and Republican-led enablers in congress from office and rebuilding the extensive damage done to our national security community. This is especially critical in the intelligence community where longtime professionals and experts are already warning us of the structural damage done. Americans have always loved great comebacks in our books, songs and movies. Rooting for the underdog and making a comeback is in our DNA and can be seen in countless examples throughout our history. We not only can do this, but now have no choice, if we are to survive as a constitutional republic.

There are innumerable challenges ahead for us and I do have faith that we will restore our republic, but only if we are reacquaint ourselves with who we are as Americans. Recovering that true American Spirit means also to reject fake patriotism and raise our collective voices against the fake-patriotism of today’s GOP. At the moment, the GOP’s fake-patriotism is just as loud as it is repugnant. Our voices must drown-out their conspiracy theories, lies and false narratives. Like most of you, I was raised to be polite and not discuss politics in public. Those were different times though and the GOP threat cannot be allowed to go a step further.

Trump, his colleagues and enablers just spent a billion dollars of our tax dollars a day on a war where he’s now waving a white flag. What was it for? What did we achieve and what did we lose in the process? These are only two of the endless list of questions that we all have. We will have no answers until we “throw the bums out.” We also must rid our republic from these shameless usurpers before it is us, not Trump waving the white flag.

My very best for your weekend,

Paul

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TAT readers,

Welcome back from the long holiday weekend. Like most of you, I attempted to catch my breath for a couple of days, but the regime running our government is incessantly lurking in the background and undermining our lives, while destroying our economy and national security in the process. If we are to have any hope of extricating ourselves from this greedy war for oil and power, we must be well-informed enough to put relentless pressure on every single, sitting republican congressman or senator. Only their support to the other side of the aisle, can achieve any restraint on the lunacy in the Oval Office.

As citizens, we have every reason to act and all it takes is a trip to the gas station or a supermarket to know why. The threat to our national security, has grown exponentially as well in the past 5 weeks. This issue has been poorly covered by most mainstream reporting, whose entities have either willingly or have been coerced into handling the administration with “kid gloves.” The truth is, the war is not going well for us and the administration has via incompetence, handed the Iranian regime the lion’s share of the leverage in negotiations.

Today’s essay, the sixth in the series will largely deal with why I believe the US to be now far weaker globally, too deeply entrenched in the financial disasters they continue to cause and which can be best described with an old Argentine slang word, quilombo.

"In Lunfardo (A Buenos Aires largely Spanish dialect), the word “quilombo” means a mess, scandal, uproar, disorder, or conflict. In the past, quilombo strictly referred to brothels or so-called houses of ill repute; however, as the term evolved, it began to be applied to disorganized or messy conditions or situations of conflict."

- The Meaning of ‘Quilombo’
- Transpanish
- 2011

As this is the latest in this series of essays, I will link the first five parts below, before beginning the body of this essay.

Now let’s get to the facts about this ever-worsening, global quilombo created by Trump, his administration and some of his wealthiest oligarchs.

• Part I: The coming war with Iran - by Paul Cobaugh

• Part II: It’s just always about the oil - by Paul Cobaugh

• Part III: The Iran War: Criminal Malfeasance

• Part 4: the War with Iran leads to grave consequences on a local and global scale

• Part V: The Iran quagmire is becoming quicksand

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Let’s start with the economic implications for the US and the globe, resulting from entering a war without a declared reason. To be perfectly clear, we still have no idea why we are at war in the first place. As of March 6th, The Atlantic had already isolated 10 separate rationales for the US joining Israel against Iran. I have also lost focus on the “why” and simply because it no longer matters. The old saying, “when in a hole, the first order of business is to stop digging,” comes to mind here. We’re in a deep hole with this ill-advised war and yet, the administration hasn’t stopped digging us in deeper.

"On the third day of the war in Iran, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called Operation Epic Fury the “most-precise aerial operation in history.” A difficult claim to fact-check. More difficult still has been parsing statements from the White House and the Pentagon to figure out, with any exactitude, why we are at war in the first place. So far, the Trump administration has offered at least 10 separate rationales in just six days."

- Six Days of War, 10 Rationales
- The Atlantic
- By Marie-Rose Sheinerman and Isabel Ruehl
- March 6th, 2026

So where does this war leave us, the American people, at this point in time? This is a tough question to answer simply, so let’s take a look at some supporting evidence. A good place to start are with some of the facts included in a Washington Post article this past Saturday. Below are a handful of quotes from the referenced article. As a warning, they are not optimistic.

- "Americans, by a margin of 56 percent to 7 percent, expect the war to have a “mostly negative impact” on their personal financial situation, according to a March 31 Ipsos poll. A Middle East conflict that lasts for several more months would almost certainly spread higher prices and supply chain disruption beyond Asia and Europe to American shores.

- "A three-month interruption of normal maritime commerce would drive oil prices to $170 per barrel, said Bloomberg Economics. If the war lasts for six months, the global economy — starved of 13 million barrels of oil each day — would sink into a recession, Oxford Economics said on Thursday."

- "But Americans’ war tab is mounting. Regular gasoline prices now top $4.09 per gallon, according to AAA. At $5.53 per gallon, diesel — which powers the freight and farm sectors — is approaching the all-time high of $5.82, reached after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine."

- "The strait’s closure, cutting off crude oil shipments to Asia, means that petrochemical plants in places like India and China are running short of the feedstock they use to make all kinds of products, including cosmetics, auto parts, paints, household cleaners, beverage containers and aerospace components."

- "Three of the world’s top 10 producers of urea and anhydrous ammonia fertilizer — Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran — are in the conflict zone. Most American farmers have already locked in their fertilizer orders for this year’s plantings, though those who have not will face soaring bills, according to Krista Swanson, chief economist of the National Corn Growers Association."

- "The closure of the strait has blocked roughly one-third of the global supply of another critical industrial input, helium, which is a by-product of natural gas production. The loss of Qatar’s Ras Laffan gas complex, heavily damaged by Iranian missile and drone strikes last month, will depress global supplies of the industrial gas for up to five years."

- "The price of urea fertilizer, for example, is up roughly 50 percent since the end of February. If the war lasts into May, farmers will still confront high prices in August when they order next year’s fertilizer, she said.

“If this continues on, this will be an issue for all corn growers for the 2027 crop,” Swanson said."

- The war’s economic impact could get worse for Americans
- The Washington Post
- David Lynch
- April 4th, 2026

Across the pond at Oxford University, their prognosis is just as dire as the Washington Post’s.

In the graphic above, it is quite easy to see that American households will have less disposable income, higher inflation and higher unemployment. Overall, this will drop consumer spending to %1.9 compared to the %2.5 last February, the worst numbers since 2013, excluding the pandemic period. Such a significant drop in the amount of disposable money left over for families, hurts retail and wholesale businesses the worst. Fuel prices, which are not likely to improve significantly for quite a while, are doing the most damage to individual households. With national spikes in electricity, fossil fuels for heat, transportation and industry, working Americans will experience significant financial hardship, in addition to our current affordability hurdles.

In Europe, nations are now calling on a “profit-cap” on energy companies, in order to offset the threat to the European economies and their citizens. There is even consideration that potentially, the entire EU could back a similar measure. While that the current Republican-led US Congress would never consider a similar measure until they become more desperate closer to the midterms, it will be us, the taxpayers that will ultimately pay the bill for the likely federal bailouts to select industries like farming, for the harm done to them by the callous recklessness of the administration.

Although we at home will suffer from intensifying inflation in most sectors of our lives, there are a couple of industries, smiling all the way to the bank, defense and the fossil fuel providers. In both cases, they are reaping enormous profits due to the war. Reasonable analysis could see oil hit $ 170 a barrel and the defense industry is in most cases, profiting at similar levels to big oil. This raises another deeply troubling aspect of these profits, insider trading claims against congressmen, administration officials and the Trump family can hardly be ignored. This is pure graft that only rewards a handful of Trumpian elites. Remember this when buying gas, food and your health insurance.

I have no doubts that those who have “allegedly” been profiting from insider trading, are as guilty as can be. It is not a coincidence that Trump administration officials and family, GOP congressmen and close friends of Trump have trades that nearly scream, “look at me,” due to how flagrantly they appear to break the law. While these criminals are emptying our treasury, the American people are suffering terribly from the affordability crisis. This disgracefully planned and incompetently run war, simply makes the crisis worse and by the commentary of all serious economists, will grow worse, even after the war is over, whatever that means to this bungling leadership.

By now, I’m quite certain that readers now have a clear look at where we are and where we’re going, regarding our household budgets. Let’s look now at the military and strategic issues mired in the quicksand of this ill-advised war.

By any standard, this war is not going well for the US. Israel, who had a legitimate cause for attacking Iranian military facilities and senior leadership of the theocratic terrorists in Tehran, has a strategy with outlined objectives. They are succeeding towards their objectives. The US, still without a shred of explanation as to why we’re involved in Iran at all, is failing because, they seemingly have no strategy. This is apparent in a wide variety of ways.

While that we continue to bomb Iran, the American people want to and deserve to know the objectives, the costs, the status of events and when and how, we exit the war with the region or global security situation intact. Bombastic Easter morning and expletive-ridden rant by a desperate POTUS, is demonstrable of leaders like Hitler in WW II, as his precious Third Reich was crumbling. His sanity was long gone, his military depleted beyond recovery and Germany was largely in shambles. If Trump’s ego cannot handle any version of “losing,” he needs an exit strategy right now. There isn’t one at this point.

The damage to the world’s gas can, the Persian Gulf cannot recover in weeks or likely months. The shipping through the Straits of Hormuz, is entirely under the control of Iran. Reporting shows that they still retain a little over half of the munitions such as rockets, drones and other missiles. All are capable of shutting down the Straits, should their new leadership demand it. Now that the Suez Canal, another regional waterway is under the guns of the Houthis, across the Bab al-Mandab Strait that controls Red Sea access to the Suez Canal. If we recall last year’s war on the Houthis, we did not necessarily win there either, after having to accept a 2025 ceasefire agreement brokered by Oman, and that only protected US vessels. The Houthis, longtime allies of Iran remain at war with Israel over Gaza and recently announced that they would support Iran in the war against the US and Israel.

"On November 19, the Houthis hijacked a commercial ship in the Red Sea and have since attacked at least thirty-three others with drones, missiles, and speed boats as of late January 2024. As a result, major shipping companies have stopped using the Red Sea—through which almost 15 percent of global seaborne trade passes—and have rerouted to take longer and costlier journeys around Southern Africa instead. The situation has resulted in heightened shipping and insurance costs, stoking fears of a renewed cost-of-living crisis."

- Conflict in Yemen and the Red Sea
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Center for Preventive Action
- February 28, 2026

Between the Bab al-Mandab Straits and the Hormuz Strait, Iran can now exercise majority control over these waterways, both critical to the global economy. Add to these threats that both Russia and China are now assisting Iran against the US and Israel in a variety of ways and which includes targeting information about US and friendly forces, and it’s not hard to see the potential for wider global conflict. The US is now alone. Our traditional allies such as NATO, have quite logically remained out of the war, other than in minor support roles.

"The United States will start to move stealth cruise missiles from global stockpiles to use in Iran as the conflict in the Middle East continues to escalate, Bloomberg reported on Saturday, after President Donald Trump declared Tehran's capabilities had been "completely decimated."

According to Bloomberg, the U.S. issued an order to pull from the Pacific stockpiles at the end of March, matching moves by the administration to move other assets previously deployed to the region, such as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system from South Korea."

- US to Commit High-Grade Weapons Stockpiles to Iran War—Report
- Newsweek Magazine
- Peter Aitken 
- April 4th, 2026

To make matters worse, we’ve now expended more of our mission essential Tomahawk cruise missiles in five weeks of war with Iran, than we did throughout all of Operation Iraqi Freedom. This is a severe depletion of our stockpile of munitions and since we have already borrowed much of the Indo-Pacific command’s stockpile, this leaves us uncomfortably unprepared to deal with any serious Chinese adventurism, including their stated goal of taking Taiwan by 2027. While that NATO is committed to Taiwan, most of NATO’s current focus is on defending Europe from Russian aggression and due to Trump’s visceral disdain for NATO, probably without US assistance. This makes for a bit of a “perfect storm” opportunity for Xi to achieve China’s decades old goal of reunifying China with Taiwan.

As discussed in earlier parts of this series, India is remains an unknown quantity in this global equation. Modi’s India has been a great friend to Putin, especially in regards to helping him evade sanctions on Russian oil. India has recently purchased top-line Russian fighters while also doing some hefty business with Russia’s arms networks. In fact, just last Friday, India approved a “massive $25 billion military modernization package that includes procuring new air-defense missile systems from Russia as well as remotely piloted strike platforms and transport aircraft.” Although India has deepened her military cooperation with the US and Israel for the past decade, India goes where it’s best for India, not necessarily as an ally. She is perfectly capable of juggling these awkward relationships for her own benefit.

India has the world’s fifth largest economy, despite not having ample fossil fuels to fully drive her large manufacturing sector. Like China, India has invested in a large port near the Pakistani and Iranian border, largely to facilitate the required oil to drive their manufacturing sectors. In return, both India and China help Russia and Iran to evade sanctions on oil purchases. Neither can afford to lose Iranian oil. As the fighting continues in the Persian Gulf and with both the US and Iran threatening infrastructure in and around the Gulf, both China and India have very real concerns about the stability of Persian Gulf oil supplies. Both require oil imports to drive their large manufacturing sectors. Should both or either suffer from insufficient energy sources, it would impact the global economy even further than it already is because of the war. So far, it would seem that Russia is the only winner at the moment, and this is due to dramatic increases in how much a barrel of oil sells for during this war crisis.

I’ll wrap this section up with the so-called “elephant in the room,” which is Trump’s unhinged and expletive-laden rant on social media, Easter Sunday morning. He followed his bizarre rant with a serious threat to bomb Iran’s bridges and power-plants and has set a deadline for 8 p.m. EST tonight. As expected, Iran responded to such a threat by threatening retaliation against the infrastructure of other Gulf States. Trump and his handlers have painted America and her people into a deep dark corner, with few positive options. Sustained attacks by Iran against oil and other infrastructure in places like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait etc. would dramatically increase the amount of time to restore any semblance of a normalized Strait of Hormuz.

Summary

Last evening I was listening to Senator Elissa Slotkin discuss different aspects of the war’s threat to the global economy. A former CIA Officer, Slotkin knows her stuff and has also spent operational time in the region. She stated that if the war stopped tomorrow, it would be 2027 before oil production and shipping returned to pre-war levels. The bottom-line to this is that US fuel prices will remain high and that inflation will remain a threat to our household budgets for the ensuing future. This is what matters most to Americans already stressed by current inflationary trends and the administration’s perpetual chaos.

Still, we must also not forget how edgy all of the world’s superpowers are at the moment. Russia is still being humiliated and depleted by Ukraine’s military, China is undergoing a purge of senior military and CCP leadership and India is stuck between supporting her manufacturing by continuing to help Iran and Russia evade sanctions, while deepening her interests in Israeli and US cooperation. This plus an ever desperate Trump, stymied in his dreams of controlling Gulf oil while disassociating the US from our NATO allies, is by default, a destabilized and dangerous world. Add to this that inflation costs for working Americans are driving deep and committed unrest here at home, means that we all must be ever vigilant in our resistance.

Taking control of our government after the midterms will be our chance to stabilize our republic. This must be followed urgently with restoring a capable and prepared national security community. To be blunt, Americans will both have to pitch in, and be patient as we reconstruct our nation. There are nor will be any quick fixes for the oversized quilombo left by this administration and the Republican Party.

As we can see from all of the data and information included in this essay, the world’s in a fragile state, with wolves at every door. Unity, integrity and enduring persistence are the answers to the threats discussed. We’ve been through worse and can do this, which is a message not often heard in these dark times. As anyone who has ever played or worked on a team knows, even the toughest goals can be satisfying, so long as there is infinite teamwork involved. For two hundred and fifty years, we’ve taken on the hardest jobs and mostly succeeded. There’s no reason to believe that we won’t this time around. One of our Revolutionary War heroes, John Paul Jones laid some of the groundwork for how, with one simple but iconic quote; “don’t give up the ship.” Real American patriots never will, whether it’s a warship or our beloved ship of state.

Onward,

Paul

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TAT readers,

This is a tough essay to write but someone must tell the truth about the grotesque and proverbial incompetence of the DNC. I don’t say this as a partisan but simply because the DNC is the only organization with the checkbook and reach, to fund and support the resistance, which is a non-partisan movement. I am avowedly against even the concept of political parties, but our republic is hanging on by a thread and someone must lead. Ken Martin and his DNC crew are not the ones to do it.

The overwhelming majority of their so-called “playbook” is one of those types of books we all read to help us get to sleep, uninspiring, tepid and devoid of anything that heals the decades long DNC malaise. I’ve covered this before in an “autopsy” essay on the loss in November of 2024, and a follow up last July. There has been an absence of leadership or innovation from the DNC in the 16 months since the last presidential election. Their work should have begun on November 6th of 2024, however there is scant evidence in the public arena that the DNC even still exists.

As most readers know, I’ve spent a career in the influence profession, mostly in counterterrorism and geo-strategic campaigns. I’ve researched, strategized, planned, executed and assessed influence campaigns, and often where people’s lives were at stake. I know what we all should have seen months ago and yet, I see little or nothing of any of it, even until today.

The DNC is nearly absent from the influence battlefield. I am though proud of the many volunteers, rally attendees and heroic Dem congressmen and women, exhaustively informing and reporting to us via events, videos, hearings and news reporting. They cannot do it alone. Without leadership though, competence in campaigning, analysis of target audiences and funding, even the expected gains in November will pale in comparison to what could be achieved. If the Trump administration and enabling spineless Republican congressmen weren’t so horrific and treasonous, there would be no resistance movement at all.

Many of the my comments in the body of this shorter than normal essay, will be sharp and succinct, because if we don’t poke DNC leadership in the hindquarters with something sharp, they’ll continue wringing their hands and wasting your hard-earned dollar donations again on 1990s campaigning. The GOP has a well-funded, aggressive and take-no-prisoners campaign organization and, they play for blood. They are 16 months ahead and control our government. Even in the children’s story the Tortoise and the Hare, at least the tortoise began the race at the same time as the hare that he ultimately defeated. The DNC hasn’t left the starting line.

Now, let’s get this essay away from the starting line.

Onward

The following will focus on four primary failures of the DNC:

1. Failure to even have a narrative of their vision for the midterms. Make no mistake about it, political campaigns are Narrative Warfare or NW for short.

2. Failure to have an offense

3. Failure to amplify all of the good being done by those making a difference

Before beginning, we must acknowledge the reasons that the resistance is far behind the GOP’s juggernaut of influence.

1. The MAGA GOP controls the government and has legislated voter suppression and gerrymandering for nearly two decades.

2. The GOP will use any means to win, regardless of legality.

3. The GOP has exercised immense coercion over reporting media with major mainstream news already cowering under the pressure.

4. The GOP-led US Congress has a long track record of enabling nearly any “emergency powers” for Trump and henchmen to deploy armed thugs into our streets, therefore intimidating and frightening

   opposition voters from voting.

5. They control or extort most of the elite wealth crowd into supporting them.

6. The DOJ will protect them and in most cases, so will our current SCOTUS

7. They have a 16 month head start

   

There are more items to list but I suspect you get the point by now that we are in a deep hole and with only our hands to dig out with. Still, part of American identity is to succeed as an underdog. It is simply part of who we are and this has been a reliable identity trait from the very birth of our nation. We were overwhelming underdogs in 1776 when we took on the globe’s premier power, Great Britain. Americans root for the underdog in sports, movies, books etc. We the people revel in the challenge and the midterms are no different. The excitement in the rallies such as last Saturday’s, is a strong indicator of how taking on great power, supercharges us.

1. Failure to even have a narrative of their vision or related supporting narratives for the midterms.

   We must have a narrative about what we want, how it helps restore democracy, how we will go about it, how our movement will help the American people, and that narrative must be honest and not the standard “promise everything” and backpedal later. After a couple of decades of bizarre conspiracy theories, false promises, miss and disinformation, the American people are fed up with the BS. We want straight talk, not bluster and BS. For example, “No Kings” is a good message but messages wither and die in time, unless they are connected to narratives. Without a core narrative, messages have the life-span of a fruit fly.

   What unites us is a common and age-old American narrative, that so long as we’re united, we can overcome any hurdle. This makes part of our resistance narrative, the fact that we’ve overthrown abusive kings before. We know we can do it and that is our resilience going forward. Since well and professionally crafted narratives trigger deeply embedded identity, it becomes essential to have a unifying narrative. This is why those shouting things like “blue wave” or “go Democrats” are defeating the cause. The narrative required to overcome our long odds, must include everyone, regardless of their political affiliation. If not, the underdog narrative won’t work against a deeply entrenched fascist party like today’s GOP.

   

   There is no such narrative at the moment and in fact, there are no established leaders either. Without a unifying narrative, the GOP will use messaging again to divide and conquer the resistance, just like they did in 2024, when they used the war in Gaza, to divide the Democrats. They used the Bernie Bros in 2016 to split the opposition. It’s up to us to make sure this doesn’t happen. That’s why I have been so opposed to progressives leading so many of the rallies. It’s not that their causes are not worth it, but in an election that requires middle America to come together, progressive issues in the lead, puts off independents and Republicans crossing over for this one election only. Unity is above all else until the Trump-era GOP is no longer a viable party to most Americans.

2. Failure to have an offense

   So when I was growing up, Baseball was America’s national sport and for many, still is. Any Little Leaguer knows that you cannot win a game, with defense alone. You must score runs. At the moment, the resistance is playing only defense and no matter how good a job we’re doing, we cannot win without scoring. Not only can we not win without offense, we still must play defense concurrently. Yes, multi-tasking is the answer. The question is, who will do what? This requires strategy, organization and the ability to tailor both to individual races, regions and causes. This requires expertise in analysis of individual races in different parts of the country.

   

   The past election, the left failed miserably by trying to use the same messaging across the nation. Sure there were great crowds for VP Kamala Harris, but how did that speak to voters in very different states. I can assure you as a Texan raised in the Midwest and after spending the first two plus decades of adulthood in California, canned and standardized national messaging would have failed in all three. People and states have their own unique identities too. Speak uniquely to the local identity, not what works at the national level.

   As a Texan now, I know how poorly past Democratic messaging has worked in Texas. If the DNC doesn’t know how, then they should get the hell out of the way and just pay the bills to people and candidates who do. Again, I’ll use Texas as the example. James Talarico is rocking Texas and his style which is very different from other candidates, is rocking the Texas GOP’s world. They are off balance and the usual anti-Democratic propaganda and lies they have used for decades, is useless against him. If the national party meddled in his campaign and demanded national messaging, the magic he’s creating would evaporate overnight.

   

3. Failure to amplify all of the good being done by those making a difference

   Every day I scan mainstream news, social media, and scour websites that allow me to “take the pulse” of what’s occurring around the nation and the world. Every day I see videos of fierce resistance by the Democrats in congress, calling out Republicans consistently lying, stonewalling, breaking the law and violating our constitution. Where the hell is the DNC in making these heroic battles for law, order and morality into national stories? As the old saying goes, “the silence is deafening.”

   When competing in Narrative Warfare, silence or being reactive only, is tantamount to losing. The GOP has dominated national narratives for a couple of decades while the Democrats sit around with their hands in their pockets. In NW whenever something occurs, you must be first out with your narrative, in order to establish the meaning of whatever occurred. If not, the opposition sets the national narrative. In between events, you must sustain the core narrative of the campaign itself. Again, the DNC is silent on both accounts. Due to their silence, the media picks up the narrative of the GOP instead. After all, they have to write about something.

   

   A perfect example of this was during the 2024 election cycle. The GOP droned on and on about the southern border and inflation. What they promoted was just as dishonest as their utterances today, but without anything from the DNC, the false narratives dominated anything the left said in a counternarrative. For the record, counternarratives alone, are as described in the last paragraph… a commitment to losing. We are now 16 months into having zero offensive narrative. This is an enormous DNC, self-imposed obstacle to overcome.

Summary

My friends and fellow Americans. We have the numbers, the motivation and the historical DNA to be the successful underdog in this campaign. I am not suggesting the DNC has no role, but if they won’t listen and learn, they need to get out of the way and let others lead. There are ample options in and outside the Democratic Party. What we’re up against is pure evil and I don’t joke about evil. What the resistance needs now is their checkbook and their network. If they are willing to remove their heads from where they don’t need a haircut, by all means, give them a leadership role, but not exclusively. After all, our resistance to the current evil regime is in fact, non-partisan.

Having been to a few of the large No Kings rallies, I’ve talked with a wide variety of Americans with varying political beliefs, who simply want our constitutional republic back. We want law and order, our constitutional rights, to be equal before the law, to be safe from adversaries like Russia, to be able to afford a respectable life and home as the fruits of our labor, a future that we don’t have to fear, a life free of monopolies and their oligarchs, and most of all, free from tyranny. This is what our nation was founded on.

American history is full of heroes who refused to give up on our fledgling republic. They defied the odds and carved out a nation unlike anything that came before. Despite our flaws, we’ve moved those founding principles forward in order to embrace the “better angels of our nature.” That spirit of liberty is not lost, but obscured by those that would divide us for their own purposes. I don’t know about you, but President Lincoln’s iconic quote at Gettysburg, still inspires me to protect and defend that “more perfect union” referred to by President Lincoln in his first inaugural address.

Let’s get the DNC back into shape and continue to unify the resistance with all Americans, regardless of party.

Onward

Paul

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TAT readers,

Welcome to the end of the week and as every week has been under the current regime in Washington, it has been just plain nuts. This often makes it challenging to settle on one topic but today’s Part V in the series I’ve been writing on the war in the Gulf, has had so many new negative twists and turns, I thought it warranted attention. Although I am beginning this Friday afternoon, you likely will not see it until Sunday, because I’m tracking some developments that may be worth including. The reason for narrativizing this update is twofold; first, the war with Iran is so geo-politically complex that it is difficult to give readers a concise picture by only looking at a handful of high-profile news articles and secondly, most media reports a story, leaving readers scratching their heads trying to understand what a handful of main news stories means to the big picture. The way to share meaning is via a narrative, not a story.

The reason I used the word “narrative” is because that narratives are made up of stories. An overarching narrative expresses the meaning of all of those stories when assembled. When all we get from news here in the west are independent stories, we need a narrative that helps us to interpret the meaning of all those stories when used collectively. Think of it as each chapter of a book being a story but the whole book is the narrative. Admittedly an oversimplification but still, this explanation is easily accurate enough for all of us today. For those who wish background reading from Parts I - IV, the links to the first four parts are below.

• Part I: The coming war with Iran - by Paul Cobaugh

• Part II: It's just always about the oil - by Paul Cobaugh

• Part III: The Iran War: Criminal Malfeasance

• Part 4: the War with Iran leads to grave consequences on a local and global scale

Poor reporting, focus on selected stories, pervasive hidden agendas from media owners, board rooms and investors, etc., are additional hurdles for readers to conquer. Pervasive false narratives in reporting saturate mainstream news, such as this being entirely Israel’s fault or that we are in some way, “winning.” Then there’s the absurdity of the White House claim, that there are no terrorist threats at home and the economy isn’t threatened. Americans and our fellow global citizens have a right to know about an event that threatens to acutely disrupt the global economy and has the potential for a much wider global war. If this sounds like a lot and that it’s complicated… it’s because it is.

As they say, “the first step in a lengthy journey, is the hardest,” so let’s take that first step together.

Onward

When the US joined in Israeli Defense Force or IDF’s war with Iran back on February 28th, the entire conflict took on an entire new meaning leading to significant chaos in world markets, manufacturing, security and countless other issues that daily impact every single one of us. It has only gotten worse since, except for profiteering oil companies, those well-connected enough politically and defense contractors. There is now little to no reason to expect any easy exit nor normalcy in the near future, even for years. This war has also accelerated the global geo-political realignment which began at the end of the Cold War and now sees the US allied with adversaries while ignoring or abusing our actual allies, most notably NATO. As Putin declared when congratulating Trump post election, his election was the beginning of a “new world order.”

The US entering the war as an active participant was doomed from the very first minute of the conflict. Once an important stabilizing influence in the region, imperfect as it was, the US and our current administration’s arrogant and critically stilted and negligent planning, disregarded countless factors and the hard lessons learned from what most now call, “forever wars” in the region. There was zero planning to protect our Gulf and regional allies or more importantly on the domestic front, for protecting America from what every CT/ Counterterrorism expert already knew decades ago, that Iran’s Qods Forces would impose more painful lessons on all they see as adversaries, especially the US. Furthermore, the administration refused to even consider the global economic destabilization that any entry-level intelligence analyst could have predicted.

The bottom-line is that no matter what happens in the ensuing few weeks, months or otherwise, the fallout from these failures will impact us and the world, long after the major combat activities stop. The intel preparation required to embark onto such a weighty mission or war, should have been extensive and deep. The planning should have woven that intel into every facet of the campaign plan. There was no apparent or reported effort to do so when it came to joining Israel against Iran. Commanders and allies would have been briefed so that they were also prepared for the certain Iranian responses. This did not occur. The most important thing about the planning is that we still do not know why, we are at war in the first place.

The administration has trotted out several ridiculous explanations for why we are at war, but they rarely even make it through a news cycle before they are exposed as ridiculous and utterly dishonest. The so-called “imminent nuclear threat” from Iran is laughable at best, and insulting to any thinking American at worst. The claims of Iran having an ICBM, InterContinental Ballistic Missile with the capability to carry a nuclear warhead that could reach the US, equally laughable. The “regime change” motive also exists without any visible means of support. US and Israeli intelligence circles had already forecast that there was little chance of regime change via such a war as we are currently witnessing. Here we are a month into this war and the administration remains incapable of expressing a coherent thought as to “why” we are at war. In Part II of my series, I discussed what I still believe, that we went to war for oil.

Now, with 60% of Americans opposed to the war and believing the war to not be going well, Trump and his administration have defaulted to his standard ploy of blaming others for his mistakes. Earlier this week, Trump even blamed Pete Hegseth for the war. Should things continue to worsen, look for more scapegoats to appear in our headlines.

“I called Pete, I called General Caine, I called a lot of our great people … and I said, ‘Let’s talk. We got a problem in the Middle East. We have a country … that for 47 years has been a purveyor of terror. And they’re very close to having a nuclear weapon. We can keep going and get that 50,000 up to 55 and 60, there’s no end. Or we could take a stop and make a little journey into the Middle East, and eliminate a big problem,’” Trump said Monday at an event in Memphis.

“Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up,” Trump continued. “And you said, ‘Let’s do it.’ Because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”

- Trump Throws Pete Hegseth Under the Bus as Iran War Spirals
- The New Republic
- Malcolm Ferguson
- Monday, March 23, 2026

Iran possesses the capabilities to inflict a great deal of pain on her enemies, including the US. Drones, cyber attacks, proxy forces, affiliation with US gangs and of course, state-sponsored terrorism. Iran has a long and often successful history of wielding painful lessons to those she believes her enemies. Their methods include but are not limited to the types of threats listed above. We must take these threats seriously but to date, not a single public advisory has been issued by DHS or the FBI according to Bruce Hoffman, a senior and deeply experienced US counterterrorism expert.

The bottom-line assessment is that the US homeland, is largely unprotected due to Trump administration purges, firings and senior experts leaving DHS, the FBI and other key roles in our national security. Even the FBI’s Iran Threat page on their website hasn’t been updated since the beginning of the current administration.

"DHS officials have not issued an updated National Terrorism Advisory since the most recent one expired in September. And they have not published a Homeland Threat Assessment, an annual report which highlights “the most direct, pressing threats” to the nation, since President Donald Trump took office."

- DHS silent on threat status amid war in Iran, spate of violent acts
- Washington Post
- By Maria Sacchetti
- March 16, 2026

It’s not just the threats to the homeland either. Every single day, the situation becomes more dire for the US, our allies and especially the Gulf oil states, who suffer attacks nearly every day. This does not bode well for the driver of the global economy. In a March 11th assessment by David Lubin, the Michael Klein Senior Research Fellow, Global Economy and Finance Programme of London-based Chatham House, often considered the world’s most respected and non-partisan policy institute and think tank, he laid out some particularly concerning impacts on portions of the global economy, due to the war with Iran. A few excerpts are found below in quotes.

- "The heaviest burden will inevitably fall on the region itself. History offers a guide. During the 12-day war last summer, Israel’s economy contracted by around 1 per cent in the second quarter. If the conflict is short-lived, a fall in output of a similar order of magnitude would seem plausible for both Israel and the Gulf economies. 

A more prolonged conflict would almost certainly inflict a deeper economic wound. Output would be disrupted, investment postponed and tourism curtailed. Iran’s economy will be hit even harder. Based on the impact of wars elsewhere, GDP is likely to fall by more than 10 per cent – although Iran itself last published official GDP data in 2024."

- " Around a quarter of global seaborne oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, along with roughly one-fifth of liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments. Any disruption to transit through this narrow chokepoint has immediate consequences for global energy markets. Unsurprisingly, oil and gas prices have jumped since the conflict’s start as shipments through the Strait have collapsed." 

- "The scale and persistence of the energy shock will ultimately determine the macroeconomic impact. For energy-importing economies, the main transmission channel is likely to be via inflation. Higher oil and gas prices raise the import bill faced by households and firms, squeezing real incomes and eroding purchasing power."

- "A more severe scenario in which the conflict persists for several months could see oil prices rise to around $130 per barrel before declining in the second half of the year. At a global level, the hit to growth would be modest, though the impact would be felt unevenly across regions. The euro-zone economy would probably contract in Q2 and then flatline over the second half of the year."

- How will the Iran war affect the global economy?
- Chatham House
- David Lubin
- March 11th, 2026

Remember that Lubin made these statements two and half weeks ago, and at the time believing the duration of the conflict would be relatively short. This is no longer the case. He referenced a couple of key items regarding an extended war. First, he believed that a relatively short war would allow the US economy to absorb much of the negative aspects of an economic disturbance. One aspect of even a minimal disruption, was that further Federal Reserve cuts to interest rates would likely be curtailed, therefore costing Americans more of their household budget.

One element of the economy that we don’t often hear about is, “the consumer sentiment. index?” This index begun and sustained at the University of Michigan since 1946, is a monthly look at and measurement of consumers’ feelings about their financial security or outlook towards the future. In an Investopedia article just this past Thursday, it revealed that the index dropped 6% in March and is now at its lowest point since December. This bodes poorly for the economic outlook, now undercut by the disruptions from the Persian Gulf war.

The longer this war continues, the worse it gets for much of global economy and ours here in the US where inflation already has households making tradeoffs just to make ends meet. This is reflected the now tanking approval ratings of the administration and the GOP-led US Congress, who has refused to rein in their leader. Even recent polling on the war shows that only 20% of Republicans support putting troops on the ground.

Last night, the Washington Post issued a story that is disturbing, especially to those of us who have “been there and done that,” in our forever wars. I will let the headline below speak for itself.

To make matters worse, the IDF in headlines from the Times of Israel says that Israel has nearly completed its assaults on critical targets in Iran. This leaves the US to go it alone on the ground in Iran. The Trump administration claims this to be a limited effort of a few weeks but then again, we hear different messages from them on a near hourly basis. Again, our strategic objectives are still cloaked in the fog of utterly dishonest and dangerously incompetent senior leaders at the Department of Defense, Department of State, the IC/ Intelligence Community and of course, the White House.

As for the status of the war itself, I refer you to the screenshot below from the Institute for the Study of War. These “key takeaways” are part of a daily issued full report on the war and highly recommended reading. The link is in the caption below the graphic.

At the rate of burning a billion dollars every day, seriously depleting our high tech munitions stockpiles and having to replace them by taking them away from our Pacific Command whose job is to hold China at bay, leaves the US vulnerable to our most capable foe. This raises another critically important element of Iran now having a “trump-card.” Yesterday, the Houthis in Yemen and at the southern end of the Red Sea, which is the Southern mouth of the Suez Canal in Egypt, announced that they were rejoining the fight in support of Iran. The Houthis, a smaller and different version of Shia Islam are dedicated allies of Iran.

We all recall how much damage they did to commercial shipping by targeting vessels attempting to pass their vantage point Bab al-Mandab, a shipping chokepoint not dissimilar from the Strait of Hormuz. Simply put, this means that Iran and their ally the Houthis have the ability to shutdown commerce in two of the world’s most important commercial waterways. So now, the US will be alone and without allies in the ground war, unless our NATO allies who have been horribly abused by both Trump administrations, change their minds. This isn’t likely based on Trump’s refusal to explain what his objective are to them nor us.

The final point is a big one that makes our situation and the world’s, more precarious. China and Russia are both now assisting Iran, to include targeting information against US troops on the ground within the region. I will go into more depth on this critical factor in a later essay and for the simple reason, it will take another whole essay to put this threat into perspective. In the space of fourteen months, Trump, enabled by an entirely spineless and sycophantic GOP congress, has managed to isolate the US from our traditional national security allies.

For all intents and purposes, when Israel is finished with their objectives, we will be alone, despised and painfully dangerous to the entire globe. I have plenty of words to describe this unnecessary predicament but none are printable in decent company. I don’t wish to tempt myself any further with adding those words and will now end this essay.

I wish everyone an amazing Sunday and look forward to sharing again next week.

Cheers,

Paul

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TAT readers,

My apologies for only bringing you one long essay last week. It’s been a very busy few days around here due to some professional writing and work on my next book, “Conned, the brainwashing of America in the Trump era.” Today’s essay is a topic that is both our most significant national security threat and also, a subject of importance in that upcoming book. Without solutions to dealing with miss and disinformation, there is almost no hope for restoring our republic after the Trump/ MAGA GOP era. Let that sink in, frightening as it is. It’s not just what most call propaganda either. A nation that intends to defend its values, requires a resilient moral spine. That spine is built onto knowing and standing up for what we honestly believe in, not the fake values of those who intend to dismantle it.

The reason for this topic today is that we are well into the midterm election cycle and are awash in miss and disinformation, “fake news,” conspiracy theories, false narratives, deep fakes etc., etc., etc. The Pentagon and all of the other IC/ Intelligence Community entities, as well as law enforcement are clueless about how to manage this acute threat. Research dollars are pouring into big defense contracting firms and have been for years, falsely believing that technology can solve our problems. It cannot and as our headlines tell us, neither fake news or the sales pitches of defense contractors selling snake oil will either. There are important supporting roles for technology but at this time, it cannot provide anything of significance to easing this threat. In other words, we are largely defenseless from foreign and domestic influence operations if we are to depend on the US government.

The answer is not more technology, but understanding how to build resilience to the miss and disinformation intentionally tearing our nation apart. Many experts call this “inoculating” ourselves against dishonesty, much the same way we inoculate ourselves against the threat of virally spread diseases. In my line of work, such an inoculation is also a subset of my core expertise, Narrative Warfare, and also the only way to effectively achieve such an inoculation.

"Narrative Warfare is the battle for control of the identity of audiences and based on their specific identity.

- Cobaugh
- 2025

What the heck is resilience?

In its simplest form, resilience is the ability for humans to experience hardship and have the skills, aptitude, mental and physical health, to endure through difficult challenges successfully. This is my own personal definition because many discussions regarding resilience pertain to healthy mental endurance and revolve around maintaining cognitive competence due to cognitive issues such as Alzheimer’s, dementia or some sort of other mental illness or challenge. Resilience applies to nearly everything humans experience throughout their lifetimes.

Every time that we see communities come together after and during a national disaster, we are watching resilience in action. In recent years though, that unity has been shaken by the now political overtones of responses. When no politics or agendas are present, a unified community restores their lives because they are neighbors. This is a beautiful and moving display of true American resilience, or at least it used to be. Until this administration, supporting national disasters wasn’t a partisan issue. Now this administration punishes so-called blue states while supporting the opposite and even they receive far less support. This is an insanely un-American approach to unity.

As historians will tell us, the US has come together to always face common enemies. The one glaring exception was when Republicans sided with Russia when they attacked our 2016 elections and have continued ever since. This demonstrates the depth of their brainwashing. Recent research in this area of research indicates that facing a common enemy may no longer bring us together against a common foe.

Prominent examples of resilience in US history can be found in long-term battles with enemies both foreign and domestic, as well as natural and human created disasters, such as what Tom Brokaw spoke about in his iconic book, The Greatest Generation. The Greatest Generation or Americans born between 1901 and 1927, endured drought, The Great Depression, WW II, the threat of nuclear war and the growing pains of Americans learning to fight for and improve the access to the civil rights constitutionally guaranteed to every American.

" Tom Brokaw, an NBC Nightly News anchor, gained profound insights into the valor and sacrifices of these individuals during his visits to Normandy Beach for the D-Day anniversary. He coined the term "Greatest Generation" to honor those who endured the Great Depression and fought in the war, highlighting their resilience and dedication to rebuilding post-war America."

- Brokaw Honors the Greatest Generation
- EBSCO
- James Tackach
- 2023

It has in many ways, been the same although on differing scales, for every generation of Americans. Though born with our birthright of the highest of human principles, we are still working towards what the Preamble to our Constitution called, “a more perfect union.” Only resilience and a dedication to our radically progressive founding values or what some laughably call, “woke,” have seen us hold our union together throughout the Civil War, survive multiple depressions and recessions, fight wars, fight for and pursue the Civil Rights revolution of the 60’s. The lesson here is that adhering to our founding moral principles, temper our resilience in the same way that fire tempers steel. When we survive adversity together via our extraordinary founding values, we become personally and collectively, more resilient. History doesn’t lie.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

- Preamble to the United States Constitution

When it comes to the role of resilience in combatting miss and disinformation, this critical but largely overlooked element is for all intents and purposes, overlooked by national security leaders putting all of their eggs into the one basket called, technology. The past couple of decades, those selling technology exclusively as the answer to all of our problems, have failed to produce anything of value when it comes to protecting Americans from our epidemic of false narratives, overtly dishonest propaganda and fake patriotism. Rather than admit that technology is not the solution they promised, the national security community continues to promise miracles they cannot perform. This leaves us largely unprotected.

There is no substitute though, for the hard work required to cultivate your own cognitive resilience and that is oriented towards protecting you and yours from our current scourge of dishonest and cowardly media. In our political arena, the preponderance of propaganda comes from the political right, although there are a handful of serious issues on the left as well. This pits fake values vs our true values and creates conflict between Americans. The divisiveness is intentional. Today’s GOP has been in lay terms, “conned” by the staggering invasiveness and steady stream of propaganda infecting every nook and cranny of our society. Whether we call it fake news, false narratives, conspiracy theories, lying, propaganda etc., makes no difference. The agenda of all of these terms are the same, to sell us what is good for them, regardless of what happens to us. For the rest of this essay, I will mostly use the term, “propaganda” for simplicity.

Now that we understand resilience, its critical role in our nation’s survival and how much it informs how we see the world, it is now important to talk about how we can all contribute to rebuilding resilience in the American people. Once we begin to rebuild the true values of our republic, it will take little to see our historical resilience once again blooming like flowers in Springtime. The fake-patriotism, Oligarchical dominance and White Christian Nationalist values will begin to recede as easily and naturally as does a simple wave upon the shore.

The mechanics of such a transformation are part of the built-in mechanics of being a human being. Those mechanics are part of “who we are” or what is termed our NI or narrative identity. Narrative is about how we see the world around us and is based on our own specific identity. As Americans, our collective national identity lives within nearly all of us in some manner and can be triggered easily, simply by reintroducing Americans to the truth about our national values and history, rather than allowing propagandists to sell us on historical revisionism, such as the Holocaust Denialism prevalent in far right circles.

"Holocaust Denial, also known as Holocaust Revisionism, is the attempt to deny or trivialize the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany against Jews and other groups during World War II.

For an internationally accepted definition, see the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion."

- What is Holocaust Denial?
- Museum of Tolerance

These agendas, as we can easily see from our nationally tragic experiences with the FOX News types of media, who have slowly conditioned their audiences over decades, to accept their fake-patriotism, often via historical revisionism and overt lies about what our constitution does or does not say. This is why today’s Republican Party goes to great lengths to hide truth, publish and amplify lies and false narratives, censor truth-tellers, coerce media to do the immoral bidding of an immoral administration and associated Republican Party. Even these thoroughly unethical and anti-American tactics, are no match for resiliency, if someone knows how to operate with Narrative Warfare.

To date, even our national security community has no real understanding of this professional specialty called Narrative Warfare, largely because they have bet all of their success, on the preposterous assumption, that technology can do all and be all. This approach is to me, is criminal negligence and now the survival of our republic hangs in the balance. The solace we can all take in our survival though, is that it is, we the people that can do what is required to reverse the current fascist actions and desires of the Republican Party.

How we save ourselves by rebuilding our resilience

We can take some comfort in the fact that it is relatively easy for all of us to effectively contribute to rebuilding classic American resilience. Those contributions may seem small and insignificant but this is not how Narrative Warfare works. In the case of rebuilding our traditional American resilience, it requires tapping into a pre-existing identity of Americans that recognizes and celebrates our true traditional values. The entire remaining Republican Party that continues to support and vote for GOP fascism dressed up as patriotism, no longer operates on their pre-Trump era version of American identity. This newer layer of identity may be seen as a shield of sorts between their ears, designed to keep out truth. Finding a way to tap into and trigger that old identity hidden behind that shield, is the key to success. Every small contribution from each of us, makes a difference, even if it is only with one voter.

Our family, friends and neighbors that have been conned with endless assaults on their old identity are not quite as brainwashed as most may assume. Remember the laughably pathetic crowds for Trump’s birthday parade, lousy showings at campaign events and the losses of the candidates that he’s backed, well I do too. The Republican grip on power is vanishing faster than a coherent thought in Trump’s mind. They are terrified and in response are doing everything possible to “rig” the midterms via voter suppression, intimidation, radical gerrymandering etc. This should calm some of the terror Republicans are attempting to wield against us with ICE and putting armed troops into our streets. They are far from invincible and are in fact now… vulnerable.

Most Republicans understand that their crazy is beginning to embarrass and humiliate themselves as GOP policies are now affecting them negatively too. They may be less vocal but the majority will continue to put party over country. There is though a small percentage of GOP voters who have become so disillusioned that they will join our fight to restore our nation. We must not marginalize these fellow citizens. They are doing something incredibly difficult, reconciling their former MAGA identity with reality. At the moment I would assess that our cause is very far from hopeless and until November, it’s an “all hands on deck” moment. Our tasks in recovering our resilience may be easy, but without overwhelming support from honest Americans, even an easy task may not succeed. This makes this essay a call to action.

The operative question now is, “how do we go about rebuilding our national resilience to threats and evil?

• We must not remain safely silent when our local school districts ban books and institute religion in public school classrooms. We don’t have to yell and bludgeon our opponents like our republican neighbors. Quiet unity that represents honest Americans regardless of their political views, sends a powerful message difficult to refute via the normalized verbal and physical violence common to MAGA crowds. The issue is right from wrong and whether actions conform to our constitutional guidelines.

• We must especially target the Republicans in public office when they begin repeating the insane conspiracy theories to justify their fascist policies. Again, this is best done on a bipartisan basis. As I have been saying since November of 2024, targeting Republicans in office whether on Facebook, the local news, via their local offices etc. is a powerful threat to their electability. Dragging local media to witness your side’s perspectives while they stutter their way through their dishonesty, makes a huge impact on voters, pro and con. We should all remember our successes in booting these rabid far-right ideologues out of their own townhall meetings in their districts.

• Demand answers from all elected Republicans. There is nothing at all American about Republicans showing up in congressional and state legislatures, refusing to answer the simplest of questions that they are obligated by law to answer. If they cannot answer or refuse to answer, ask your community a simple question, “why should anyone vote for them if they refuse to honor their obligation to inform their constituents.

• Believe it or not, a 2,500 year old philosopher named Socrates, devised a method for deepening effective dialogue that works very well when engaging a Republican voter on controversial topics. This is called the Socratic Method. It is still taught today, especially in law schools, and is considered an effective method of sorting out underlying beliefs and assumptions. If a student or someone engaged in a Socratic-styled conversation cannot justify and defend their assumptions, they tend to begin doubting their pre-existing assumptions. The advantage of asking questions in a non-threatening manner, often is enough for them to speak freely on what they assume their beliefs to be. Via self-discovery by way of the questions, it is possible for them to even begin to question themselves, seeking an honest answer.

  • “The Socratic method uses questions to examine the values, principles, and beliefs of students. Through questioning, the participants strive first to identify and then to defend their moral intuitions about the world which undergird their ways of life. Socratic inquiry deals not with producing a recitation of facts... but demands rather that the participants account for themselves, their thoughts, actions, and beliefs... Socratic inquiry aims to reveal the motivations and assumptions upon which students lead their lives.”

    • Socratic Method: What Is It and How Can You Use It?

    • Jack Maden

    • 2021

• Focus on expressing what those opposing the regime in power believe in, rather than just pointing out what’s wrong with the other side. No one responds well to constantly being verbally punched in the nose, for expressing their beliefs. Over time and with sustained engagement, it can be surprising at how people will find truth, whether they admit it or not. This doesn’t preclude employing honest but controlled anger and frustration. We all have a great deal to be furious about when the administration perpetually violates laws and ignores both our constitution and court orders. Still, we must do what the DNC refuses to do, provide a platform for restoring our values, our constitutional rights and what our vision for the future is.

  • There are countless Democratic officials doing heroic work narrating what is occurring in congress, but without a platform, how can we ask Americans to chose ours, when it does not even exist?

• Don’t waste your time on the aggressive and loud deeply MAGA Republicans. We all know the kind. They are fully radicalized and incapable of rescue from their brainwashing. This is a fact fully understood by professionals deeply experienced in radicalization, ideology, extremism and violent extremism. Once a person crosses a certain threshold where they publicly espouse and act on their immoral and un-American beliefs, they rarely recover, no matter how good an effort is made by professionals, to unravel their psychological dedication to an aberrant ideology.

• Above all, we must all raise our voices and in unison whenever possible and absolutely not from a partisan position. Nothing will make an ideological opponent dig in more deeply than employing partisan imagery such as “blue wave” or any other partisan flag-waving. Remember, the so-called resistance is devoted to restoring American values, not converting the nation into Democrats. I have long adhered to a personal mantra that says, “do the right thing and the politics will sort themselves out in your favor.”

• Finally, don’t mistake my recommendations for carefully building resilience, for weakness. We must remain firmly dedicated to truth, our true national values, being equal before the law and most insistently, fighting back passionately when confronted by the regularly occurring unconstitutional actions by the Trump administration and their GOP enablers.

  • Displays of patriotism, discussing history via credible sources, our constitutional rights as Americans and telling the great stories throughout our history of those who courageously defended our nation’s founding values. We will get nothing but the opposite from Trump-era Republicans. Let them make a mockery of themselves, by trading in ignorance and arrogance. The more people listen to truth and reason, the more that will actively support our cause.

  

The recommendations above take time as does all successful Narrative Warfare campaigns. We have scant time left before the midterms and must get moving now. I’m also certain that my fellow Americans are beyond creative and will find more pathways to building resilience among their communities. Those with technology and social media skills, create campaigns to tell the stories of Americans standing up for our nation and its values. Go to Republican elected official’s accounts and use those little emoji’s effectively. In a time when social media is the weapon de jour of authoritarian regimes, beat them at their own game.

Social media data can play a significant role in success. Every time someone dislikes the posts of MAGA republicans, it adds up and makes the opposition either double-down on their nonsense, or makes them reconsider another approach. During this administration, Republicans are taking a beating on social media except within their closed echo chambers like Truth Social. I can assure you that the data-crunching henchmen of GOP influencers, pay strict attention to regular assessments of how well they believe they’re doing. At the moment, those assessments are doing more poorly, by the day.

We don’t win battles or wars by becoming our opponents. The resistance to violent, deadly and unconstitutional ICE operations in our cities have clearly demonstrated that massive, unified and peaceful resistance is a winning strategy. The people of Minneapolis and Portland especially were perfect examples of how much power that “we the people” have. It’s far easier to be fearless, when we are not alone in resistance.

Summary

Although this has been another long essay, I still find it a most important topic in supporting the restoration of our republic. The equation is fairly simple but requires great collective effort from all Americans who simply want our nation back from the clutches of tyranny. The logic trail goes something like the following:

1. We are a nation of brilliant founding principles that are designed to celebrate “inalienable human rights.”

2. Those principles have long been the primary strength of we the people.

3. The Republican Party in the Trump-era exists on fake American values and bizarre conspiracy theories.

4. Our true values are far stronger and deeper rooted than any of the fake religious and American values used to brainwash republicans via dangerous influence campaigns over the past forty or so years.

5. Our founding values are the braided steel spine of American resilience.

6. Successfully rebuilding that spine via stories, engagement and mass protests celebrating those true values by default shores up our resilience.

7. Throughout our history, that resilience has paid off in sustaining our republic and helping us move towards that promised, “more perfect union.”

8. Only when we remained silent during over thirty years of FOX News and similar GOP media brainwashing of our families, friends and neighbors, did our resilience fade and lead us to our current Republican threat.

9. We all hold the power to contribute in large or small methods to rebuild our natural resilience.

10. We must not fail now, or risk our legacy of liberty being erased from the history of the world.

    

I believe in you, our values and our future. All that we must do now, is be willing to play our part as courageously as those who have ensured that legacy for two-hundred and fifty years.

Onward my friends, ever onward,

Paul

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TAT readers,

I’ve been doing deep-dive research regarding the imminent threats to our midterm elections and which I was hoping to publish today, but today’s headlines about the US involvement in the war against Iran will preempt that essay until later, hopefully this week. I view our midterms as a “make it or break it” event in US history and so deserves my undivided attention. Today’s war news though distracted me and demands that I must once again state some critical points that dispel the false narratives about our involvement, Israel’s rights to defend herself and the disturbing commonly held beliefs about Israel being some sort of genocidal ogre. Today’s brutal critiques will greatly offend many on the so-called “both sides of the aisle” in congress and the US electorate.

For long-time readers, you will see several links to previously published essays as “background reading,” however the essay itself, will be an entirely new narrative surrounding a critically destabilized Middle East. Many would find it distressing for me to attack “both sides,” but I do not write for profit. As the name of this publication states, telling the truth about our most severe national security threats, is my sole objective. Truth is often offensive to those who’ve been seduced by false narratives and the overt lies of powermongers such as this administration, their sycophantic political party and their oligarchical enablers.

"Truth is, all known facts from credible sources, presented objectively and in context.

- Cobaugh
- 2023

It is not just the Republicans either. The left, especially the progressive wing, have also partially succumbed to false narratives about Israel being a genocidal actor. There is plenty of blame to go around, here’s the spoiler alert; we cannot solve for any solution in the region if we do not look at truth, rather than false beliefs about the region and its people. It’s the same as a math problem because you cannot just shove the numbers you like into an equation and expect to answer the problem correctly. If you want a solution, employing all available truth is the only effective manner of achieving one grounded in reality.

Some of the issues to be discussed in today’s essay include but are not limited to the eight points listed below.

1. Israel has been under assault by her neighbors and others in the region from the very minute that she became her own state in May of 1948. Israel has the same rights as any other nation to defend herself.

2. The claims of genocide in Gaza are laughable at best and dangerous at worst. They are perpetuated largely by powerful nations looking out for their own interests, not the Palestinian people. By my last calculations based on a variety of sources, there were between 35,000 and 90,000 Hamas and other militants in Gaza pre-war. Since no reporting entity differentiates between civilian and combatant deaths, it would be insane to believe the numbers quoted by known propaganda entities like the Hamas Health Ministry. Add to this Hamas’ use of innocent Palestinians as human shields, bait etc. and a far more accurate picture comes into view. War is hell and while I don’t agree with every tactic employed by Israel, professionally speaking the IDF has operated far more in accordance with international law, than not. As they say, “the devil is in the details.”

   

3. The Arab Gulf oil States are to my mind, deeply invested in sponsoring and sustaining these false genocide narratives. I’ve explained the general antisemitism from mainstream media reporting on casualties until I’m blue in the face. No one in the mainstream western press wants to solve the problem of accounting for the ratio between combatants killed and civilians killed. Most western reporting has been borderline antisemitic in their reporting on the plight of Palestinians for decades.

4. Palestinians also have a right to exist, but are far more oppressed by surrounding Arab states and Iran, who continue to use them as pawns in their pressure campaign to paint Israel as the only bad actor. Most Israelis and Palestinians have long been amenable to a two-state solution and there are ample examples of collective Israeli and Palestinian efforts for peace. Where is this reporting?

   

5. Iran has been oppressing her citizens for decades and this also includes the period under the Shah, as much as under the Extremist, theocratic regime in power since the 1979 revolution. Iran has also been the most dangerous global, state sponsor of terrorism for decades.

6. The Trump administration’s approach to the Middle East is no different to their approach to domestic policy, as that it is transactional, in support their favorite oligarchs, which in this case is, “big oil” and designed to afford geo-strategic realignment more favorable to Russia, China and India than US and allied interests.

   

7. US political interests by both parties are in fact undermining any potential opportunity for peace between Israel and the Palestinian people. This is due to overreliance on the false narratives being wielded by both parties for their own political pursuits.

8. The absence of any credible historical understanding about Israel and her neighbors by most Americans, has led to the acceptance of false political narratives disseminated by political partisans.

9. Another significant false narrative complicating the situation revolves around the false narrative that US Christian Nationalists actually care about Israel’s Jewish population. Christian Nationalists care only about the role that the land of Israel plays in their Book of Revelations and “End of Times” prophecies.

Below is a link to a Special Edition of TAT about the war in Gaza and links to many of the twenty or so reports I wrote on the war in Gaza and that provide not only my sources, but my professional insights based on a career in Counterterrorism and deep experience in the region.

• TAT bi-annual journal: Israel, Gaza, Hezbollah and the Middle East

The truthful narrative of what is occurring in the Middle East. First up, a short history of Israel’s battle for survival.

As we move into the narrative portion of this essay, I would like to remind everyone that I’ve written often and deeply about Israel, her enemies, the war in Gaza and just within the past two weeks, a four part series on the war in Iran and the region. These are well over twenty essays and which I will link to in this essay. The region is so far past any normalized definition of “complex” that I have spent over fifty years researching, traveling in and operating in the region. Even the immense amount of words produced in the aforementioned essays, are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Today’s essay is me telling the story in a more succinct manner, in order to make it more palatable for those who don’t want to read all of the background in the linked essays.

• Part I: The coming war with Iran - by Paul Cobaugh

• Part II: It's just always about the oil - by Paul Cobaugh

• Part III: The Iran War: Criminal Malfeasance

• Part 4: the War with Iran leads to grave consequences on a local and global scale

As is commonly said, the best place to start, is at the beginning. The Jewish calendar year is now, 5,786. Christianity is estimated to be 2,026 years by a modern calendar and Islam, 1,416 years, also by our modern calendar. Scholars will debate all of this but that is immaterial to today’s discussion. There is no doubt that Judaism came first and that both Christianity and Islam unapologetically share much of what is included in Jewish religious texts. All three of these major religious belief systems have had their descendants living in the region collectively, for at least 1,416 years and on the land now known as Israel. All three religions plus several others still live in modern Israel and mostly at peace with each other. So let’s stop the willful divisiveness, most often stirred into violent passions by outsiders.

Islam, controls roughly 99% of the land in the region, plus Iran, a different type of Islam than all of the other Muslim states. Quite literally, those Arab neighbors went to war with the new state of Israel, within minutes of her declaring her independence as the British Mandate expired on May 14th, 1948. The Jewish state is tolerant of all other religions within her borders, and with very few exceptions. Unfortunately, the “Bibi” Netanyahu government is one of those exceptions and is best defined as an Israeli version of MAGA. This means, extreme racism and xenophobia within the far-right political parties making up Bibi’s coalition government.

Israel’s democracy has it’s own distinct flavor and requires a coalition-styled government where many different perspectives of Israeli interests are represented. Bibi is no different than Trump other than being intelligent, an accomplished statesman, intensely military savvy and yes, corrupt as the day is long. Still when it comes to Israel’s defense, he and all Israelis know what it takes just to survive the endless Arab wars and terrorism since May of 1948. It’s part of growing up in Israel that all Israelis are well trained when it comes to protecting themselves and the state. There have been a couple of tragic modern events where national defense failed and those are the October 7th, 2023 Hamas and Iranian massacre. The other was the 1973 war that Israel eventually won, but at great cost to the nation.

What most don’t understand is that the Arab states in 1948 had asked what today we call Palestinians, were asked to leave by the attacking Arab neighboring nations until they had eliminated the Jews and then they could come home. The problem is that those Arab states lost the war. They would try again over and over again for the next 75 years. When outright war didn’t work, terrorism became the tactic de jour and which continues to this very day. Yasser Arafat of PLO infamy was along with his proxies were primary terrorist organizations assaulting Israel during this time period. Iran like most other Muslim states at the time of Israel’s statehood had large numbers of Jewish residents, but after 1948, roughly 90% of Jews living in Muslim lands were expelled, with many moving to Israel.

In my now long lifetime, terrorism has been the primary strategy to expel Jews from their nation, and is now often expressed in the genocidal saying, “from the river to the sea.” Hamas, Hizbollah, Iran and other nations still believe in either genocide for all Jews or their expulsion from all lands considered Muslim. In fact, both Hamas and Hizbollah have long maintained a call for genocide in their charters and founding documents. Israel and Egypt made peace with the Camp David Accords and Jordan has always had a reasonable relationship with Israel, even though other Arab nations have pressured Jordan on occasion to join in their wars against Israel. Palestinians that were originally resettled in Arab nations in 1948 are treated as second and third class citizens in those nations. To add to this Arab bias against their own, it has long been the West who has provided the majority of the aid to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

My first wife who served with me in the US Army, was an Israeli citizen with a Green Card at the time of our marriage in 1976. When first visiting Israel in 1984 to meet her extended family, some lived in the West Bank settlements. This was prior to the first Intifada and when traveling to Arab settlements with her family to do business or shop, the ease of the relationships between both “sides” was inspiring in the sense that, these old foes were working collectively towards peace and cooperation. Sadly, a Cold War Soviet Union, some of the Arab States and their terrorist proxies provoked what became the deep and violent clashes we’ve seen ever since. It wasn’t just the Soviets and Arabs either. These were years when former Israeli General and eventually Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took a hard path towards the opposition. This cost Israelis and Lebanese innocents along with combat troops on both sides horrifically.

The bottom-line to this short and admittedly simplified history of Israel’s survival, must be understood in order to understand what is now occurring in Iran and the region. In other words, Israel’s actions against Iran are far more than justified and to be commended. I wouldn’t even mind if the US supported in every possible manner except participating in actual combat operations, without sorting this out in congress and to the American people first. She is the size of New Jersey and before the 1967 war, was only 17 miles from East to West. Americans commenting without at least understanding these basic and well documented facts, simply have no idea what they are talking about, regardless of side.

The last thing I will say in this section is that I challenge any American to express whether they would be patient for 76 years, if we had neighbors constantly attacking us and terrorizing our citizens, just for existing

Tragically, this portion of the essay that deals with the US stumbling unaware and arrogantly into this war, is far easier to tell. It’s no secret that Trump and his deeply inexperienced cabinet are incompetent on a scale never seen in American history. One of the only qualified but deeply compromised officials resigned this morning, doing all possible to distance himself from this war and what comes next. Joe Kent may have had the experience but he was every bit as dishonest, racist and conspiracy theory oriented as the worst among this entire administration. He knew the lies about the intelligence and couldn’t run away fast enough. Good riddance. There is no longer any hope that someone with a moral spine and experience will sign up for his job. The entire administration, supported blindly by a spineless, Republican-led Congress refuses expertise, only cherishing blind loyalty.

Not one thing has been done to plan for protecting the Homeland from the globe’s most capable, state-sponsored terrorist organization, Iran’s Qods Forces. They and those who came before then have a long track record of heinous acts, dating back to the very beginning of the regime that came to power shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Although Trump claims publicly that we have had no terrorist attacks since the war began, this is a bald-faced lie. There have been at least three US terrorist attacks since the beginning of the war with Iran. The Michigan Synagogue attack, the Old Dominion University attack and an attack at an Austin bar are all related to the wars in the Middle East.

In the Persian Gulf and surrounding region, Iran’s attacks have been merciless and far more capable than our intelligence community recognized. This is nothing new in recent history. This was the same community that believed that Ukraine would fall in hours when faced with Putin’s genocidal invasion. Now with incompetent IC/ Intelligence Community leadership like Tulsi Gabbard at ODNI, John Ratcliffe at CIA, Kash Patel at the FBI and no one at DHS, we are for all intents and purposes, fully undefended from terrorism at home. If fully inexperienced Senator Markwayne Mullin is confirmed to head up DHS, things get far worse.

Terrorism at home is not even the worst of our current situation. The US and global economy continues to suffer the effects caused by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s energy flows. There is no hope in sight for this as that Iran’s capability to inflict paralyzing damage on any vessel attempting to transit the Strait. Markets are rocked daily in some of the world’s most important economies. China and India, powerful manufacturing economies and the second and third largest global economies, depend on a stable supply of energy to maintain their economies. Fuel prices at home here in the states, are pricing workers out of their means to get to work. Diesel, which powers the overwhelming majority of our shipping by truck has gone over $5.00 a gallon, for only the second time in our history.

Americans are suffering from coast to coast are suffering an affordability crisis, that continues to be little more than a talking point to the Trump administration. The administration’s transactional defining trait cares only about their own wealth and the power that comes from it. I once learned an old adage that power is the ultimate goal for authoritarian leaders. This was described as a four-legged stool where money, land, weapons and a willingness to employ them ruthlessly are the legs of the stool. No matter what, these factors define every one of leaders around the world that Trump prefers to our long-trusted allies, such as NATO.

Mentioning NATO is a perfect segue to the next point. Trump attempted to leave NATO during his first term. In the current term, he’s brutality treated NATO allies with rhetoric, assistance to Putin and continued off and on failure to support Ukraine’s defense. He’s abused the very alliance that provided a deterrent against Russian and the Soviet Union since its formation. He’s given Putin relief lately by making it far easier for him to sell sanctioned oil. India under Modi and China are the biggest benefactors outside Putin himself. Russia, cash poor depends on oil and is one of the only significant ways that Putin funds his war in Ukraine. Now both Putin and Trump have gone begging for assistance due to their failure when starting wars.

In today’s ISW, Institute for the Study of War, Special Report on the war with Iran, they make it clear that there are few answers to Iran’s threat to the Strait of Hormuz.

Key Takeaways

"The United States and Israel are currently attempting to use force to prevent Iran from disrupting shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. A weakened regime that remains in power after this war would be able to disrupt shipping whenever and for however long it pleases with little effort if its current, relatively limited, strike campaign on shipping proves sufficient to cause the US and Israel to surrender.

A failure to demonstrate the will and ability to deny Iran the ability to disrupt traffic will make it enormously harder to deter Iran from future disruptions. Stopping the war in current conditions would thus represent a major strategic challenge that the United States or Israel would need to contend with in future rounds of conflict with a regime that will continue to be a committed adversary.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that it struck the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy headquarters in Tehran on March 16. It stated that commanders used the headquarters to direct IRGC Navy forces and plan operations against Israel and other regional countries.

The IDF confirmed that it killed Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Larijani, who was a long-time regime insider and had held many senior posts, in airstrikes in Tehran overnight on March 16 and 17. Larijani’s death likely weakens a key faction in competition with the Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei-IRGC nexus, but it will not end the ongoing competition.

A long-time observer of drone operations in Ukraine suggested on March 17 that the drone footage posted by likely Iranian-backed Iraqi militia front group Saraya Awliya al Dam is consistent with a fiber optic first-person view (FPV) drone. The Iranian proxy group’s decision to advertise its possession of such a weapon would be an explicit threat aimed at the United States."

- Iran Update Special Report, March 17, 2026
- Institute for the Study of War
- Ria Reddy, Caroline Moorman, Adam Fattah, Benjamin Schmida, Avery Borens, Nidal Morrison, Samuel Shafiro, Brian Carter
- March 17th, 2026

Finally, the money we are spending on this war, the deep depletion of our critical munitions, the acutely increased domestic terrorism threats, the now out of control blockade of 20% of the world’s oil and its impact on the global economy along with our ostracization from allies and friends, only serves to significantly weaken our national security, while imposing daily increasing hardship on all here in the states, can only be defined as failure on an epic scale.

Again, I support Israel’s need to put an end to Iran’s offensive capabilities and could have also supported US assistance in a supporting but non-combat role, had the slightest planning been done to mitigate the negative burdens on the American people. No effort at all was made to plan anything but the offensive military action. My support would have also required this dangerously lawless administration, to adhere to their legal requirements under the 1973 War Powers Resolution or Act, which requires them to coordinate with congress and to explain this war to the American people.

"The War Powers Resolution (WPR), first adopted in 1973 over the veto of President Richard Nixon, establishes presidential reporting requirements and parliamentary procedures intended to reaffirm the constitutional role of Congress in committing the United States into armed conflict abroad. The existence of these fast-track procedures provide an opportunity for Members of Congress to obtain a vote on—or more often in relation to—legislation that either authorizes the presidential use of U.S. Armed Forces or directs their removal from hostilities. When legislation has been introduced pursuant to the WPR, the House and Senate have often chosen to structure consideration in ways other than those prescribed by the statute.

Before the President commits U.S. troops into hostilities abroad, the WPR directs that Congress first be consulted "in every possible instance." The WPR further mandates that the President report to Congress within 48 hours of deploying U.S. forces if Congress has not declared war or statutorily authorized the action. The President must continue reporting to Congress at least every six months for the duration of the engagement. Sixty days after the President first reports to Congress (or was required to do so), the use of the Armed Forces is automatically terminated unless Congress has declared war or passed legislation authorizing the action. The President may extend this 60-day period an additional 30 days by certifying in writing to Congress the need for continued use of force."

-  The War Powers Resolution
- Congress.gov

We the American people still have no idea why the administration took this ill-advised action. As I explained in Part II of the four part series I’ve written over this past couple of weeks, I believe this war to be at least partially for oil and to position the Trump administration for further dominance over global resources. After all, Venezuela was about oil as will be Cuba next. Military strikes against targets in Nigeria is also about establishing a pretext for more aggression that leads directly to Nigeria’s oil resources. Columbia who also has oil wealth has also been threatened. We do not pay our military to secure more wealth for big oil. It’s not just oil either as that nations with mineral wealth such as Greenland are also high on Trump’s target list, as are Mexico and Canada, and for the same reasons.

This is the United States of America, not a “Banana Republic” where dictators enrich themselves via tax payer funded aggression. We are designed with checks and balances just to avoid becoming such a republic. Sadly, the Republican-led congress has turned over many of those checks and balances to the Executive Branch, rending it impotent as a check on power. This by the way, is the precise strategy of Project 2025, which is designed to empower the Executive Branch over the Legislative and Judicial. We cannot allow this administration and the Republican Party to take one more step towards their autocratic goals. History is littered with what happens to the people when they lose control of their style of government, to selfish and cruel autocrats or worse.

It will take bipartisan cooperation to rein in the madman in the White House. I hope that the GOP can finally muster up enough courage to do their job and stand up to Trump and his henchmen. It will take more that thoughts and prayers based on their behavior in the Trump era. Believe it or not, this is the short narrative of what you will not hear in much of today’s mainstream news. We all wish for innocent men, women and children to be safe throughout this and future conflicts in the region. We cannot do anything effective if we don’t stop living on false narratives and begin building solutions based on truth. It’s the only way that we can begin forging peace.

Thanks to all for your patience in reading this long essay.

Paul

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TAT readers,

Today’s essay is the fourth in a series that I’ve been writing, ever since this ill-informed and poorly planned war began. I’m talking about the chaotic situation left for all the regional states and economies around the world now subjected to the whims of three despots, Trump, Putin and Xi. The worst possible aspect of this war for US citizens, is the administration’s absolute failure to prepare or even consider a strategy to protect the homeland and our allies, from terrorist attacks by Iranian Qods Forces and their proxies. I have covered a great deal of the reasons for and who benefits from this quest for oil, but there’s one more critical issue that I hope to persuade you to consider, the so-called, New World Order.

At the very beginning of Trump’s current term, the plans were already in place as we can see from the insane claims about Greenland, Canada, Venezuela, Cuba and several other nations. The short explanation is a new world order that is divided up into at least three primary powers with all other nations as “colonies” of the only three fully sovereign nations, the US, Russia and China.

Below are the links and headline graphics from parts 1-3 and tonight is the fourth in the series. Will there be a fifth? Who knows when a selfish and cruel malignant narcissist runs our republic, like it’s his own personal kingdom of serfs. A spineless and complicit Republican Party, are his enablers and are terrified of him more than they are of the American people. It’s up to us to demonstrate to every sitting Republican in Congress with maybe one or two exceptions, that ignoring us invalidates their preconceived notions about who is more of a threat to them, their dear leader, or us at the polls.

• The coming war with Iran - by Paul Cobaugh

• It’s just always about the oil - by Paul Cobaugh

• The Iran War: Criminal Malfeasance - by Paul Cobaugh

Overview

In the long-run, this essay intends to lead readers to understand that there is an enormous geo-strategic shift going on globally. It began as the Berlin Wall fell in November of 1989, and has been evolving far more rapidly since the beginning of the first Trump administration. Yes, this is because whether Republicans believe it or not, Trump and Putin operate like the mafiosos they are, and only acknowledge power and the loyalty of those subservient to them. There’s no mutual respect nor honor in either. With this understanding, let’s go onward towards understanding what this insight means in the already developing NWO or rather, “new world order.” I will use the acronym NWO throughout the rest of this essay. I will also do my best not to repeat too much from parts 1-3 in order to reduce the lengthy amount of reading that was included in the first three.

I first began writing about this NWO in December of 2024, the month after our last presidential election. I had already understood the earlier signs due to professional work regarding terrorism, Russia, China, India and related issues. There are a wide spectrum of national security issues relating to each and, in how they cooperate on those issues. From roughly 2014 on, the NWO has been slowly but steadily inching forward until the beginning of the current Trump administration. Now, the machinery of consolidating the new spheres of influence for each, is in full motion. Yes, this makes matters urgent at this time, as the core of global commerce begins shuddering under the strain caused by the closing of the Strait of Hormuz to oil transport.

This strain is far greater though than just commerce. Considering Iran’s centric-role in regional conflict, often with Russian assistance prior to the Ukraine war, her terrorist allies such as Hamas, Hizbollah and several other Sunni Arab Islamic violent extremist groups, have the potential to disrupt far more than just commerce… globally. Pre-Trump era allies are now rethinking and backing away from the US with Trump’s loyalty to and alliance with Putin being the primary reason. The chances that old alliances will resolidify in any meaningful way in the near future are as they say, “slim and none.” The Republican administration and cabinet officials are seeing to this by enabling him and his handlers. Yes, Trump has handlers.

What we are witnessing is a rather clever strategy that places Trump at the top, in my opinion as a figurehead only. It’s no secret to anyone that he is quite often, a fool babbling about sharks, electrocution, werewolves and other bizarre topics. He’s not only suffering cognitive decline, but it’s not a long fall because he never really ascended to any intellectual heights. This should be crystal clear to any serious adult. His mental decline is accelerating before our very eyes, and in the eyes of the world. The GOP and anti-democracy and oligarchical Heritage Foundation is running our government. It is supported by some of the world’s wealthiest oligarchs and their lesser billionaire allies. Reporting on Trump’s phone call with Putin yesterday, sounded like maybe Putin may be calling some shots.

Putin and Trump’s mafioso-themed “loyalty” means that Putin put him in office and helped him regain office via influence operations, often in arms-length coordination with the Republican Party. That crime family so-called “honor code” means that Trump now owes Putin. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence or SSCI which is the premier intelligence committee in congress, said so in their three and a half year, Republican-led investigation which produced, a five volume report on Russian Interference in our 2016 election. Volume five, the Counterintelligence report is beyond damning and although heavily redacted, clearly demonstrates to connectivity between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian intelligence.

The administration’s ongoing sellout of the NATO beginning with his first term and now worsening by the day, plus Trump’s alliance with Putin along with the support of the brainwashed Republican Party in place, now there is freedom for Putin and Trump to make the moves on the chess board, that they’ve been planning for over decade.

Next we’ll look at the primary players and some of their high-profile moves on the global chess board, in this critical geo-strategic paradigm shift that favors only the strong and ruthless. In fact, Putin’s favorite view of sovereignty is now fully embraced by the current administration.

"As the war progressed, justifying it as a “battle for sovereignty” against neocolonialism seemed to gain favor among the Russian elites and with Putin himself. For example, at the end of April 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, “Russia’s military operation in Ukraine contributes to the liberation of the world from the neocolonial oppression of the West” (Kommersant.ru, April 30). In June, Putin spoke about the need to “ensure state sovereignty.” He stated that “a country can be either a sovereign or a colony,” and without sovereignty, “it has no chance of surviving in a tough geopolitical war” (Izvestia, June 9).

In late July 2022, at a forum meeting of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, Putin reiterated that “the neocolonial model of the dominance of global elites is over” and “only truly sovereign states can ensure high growth dynamics” (Interfax, July 20). It is significant that propaganda sites, while developing the Russian leader’s theses, came up with the justification that the war in Ukraine has turned out to be vital for Russia’s “sovereignty,” since it gave rise to a global conflict with the West. This conflict, they allege, creates opportunities for abandoning offshores, “giving Russia a chance to get out of the fetters of economic enslavement more quickly” (ЕADaily.com, August 1)."

- New Concept of ‘Russian Sovereignty’ Is Inextricably Linked to the War
- Jamestown Foundation
- Ksenia Kirillova
- August 15th, 2022

An admittedly over-simplified explanation of this quote is; Putin believes that only global powers have the right to full sovereignty while that every other nation is a “colony” that has no sovereign rights. Putin only sees Russia, The US under Trump and potentially Xi as fully sovereign states. India I believe, may be playing a unique role at the moment, that aligns herself with Putin and Trump, therefore eventually surrounding and slowly bleeding China into submission. Yes, I know all of this sounds a bit far-fetched, but for those who’ve followed these nations and their machinations for a while, will have seen the very same indicators that I have.

Let’s begin at the beginning of this current Trump administration.

As Putin congratulated Trump on his election win, he also discussed a NWO. This is nothing new for Putin and he’d been publicly discussing this since at least 2022. In September of 2025, Putin, Xi and Kim of N. Korea met while China held a military parade to demonstrate China’s power and key relationships. Since Putin’s military humiliation in Ukraine, he’s had to go, “hat-in-hand” begging for weapons, ammunition and far more. For decades, Russia was seen as the senior partner in Russian/ Chinese opposition to the West, but with Ukraine decimating Russia’s military, even with Chinese and N. Korean assistance, the hierarchy has become inverted. Xi is now on top and Putin is the junior partner. Kim Jong Un, is more of a tag along, that is occasionally invited to sit at the adult table.

Still, all is not rosy between the three and there was no public mention of Trump during the festivities. But on the international scene, Trump’s moves more often than not, demonstrate that he’s playing a game that he believes only he and Putin know the rules to. The Republican-led congress has long hobbled Ukraine’s chances to reclaim their land from Putin’s occupation forces, by simply denying to provide aid. This of course at the behest of Trump. Trump, despite his tough talk about pressuring both sides to come to a peace or ceasefire agreement, is regularly upstaged by Putin.

This introduces us to India’s role. India has done as much as anyone to assist Russia in evading sanctions on her primary cash cow, oil. On many fronts, Modi has been elusive regarding Russia but has supported Putin in a wide variety of ways. Just in the past couple of weeks, India has purchased more of Russia’s top aircraft among other weapons related business. China, India and Turkey are the primary violators ensuring that cash continues to flow into Russia’s economy, often on life-support.

The other issue where Trump’s decisions have assisted Russia’s economy, is by joining Israel in this war against Iran. As we all know when we fill up our vehicles at the gas station since the war started, fuel prices have skyrocketed. This means profits skyrocket for the oil providers, therefore showering Putin’s coffers with a windfall of cash. When it comes to doing business with India, I like to say it’s caveat emptor, or buyer beware. India’s claim of non-alignment is a lot more fragile than at any time in my lifetime. She has her own problems with China, although there have been a few signs that there is now better dialogue between these two, millennia-old rivals. Where India lands regarding her alignment, matters a great deal to the global economy and global security paradigm. As a long fan of India’s democracy, I hope to see her emerge from this chaos, stronger and more democratic than Modi seems to like.

Last but not least, let’s take a look at how I saw our most serious national security threats last December, shortly after the election. My PowerPoint skills are not the best as you can see in the graphic below, but it does a fair job of illustrating the overlapping threats and players.

The only major change I would make is to remove India as a threat at this time. I still cannot get a good feel for where she will end up in the big picture. The way the war is reported in the US, it’s very difficult to get a solid grasp on things but fortunately, I delve into foreign news, trusted allies and reputable think tanks. Nearly all mainstream reporting, especially in the US is negatively impacted by Trumpian threats demanding compliance with administration narratives and denunciation of naysayers. Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert are prime examples. I lost my faith in Reuters and the BBC after their overt antisemitic reporting of the war in Gaza. I do follow select journalists and depend on the Associated Press for overall reporting. Plus I have former national security colleagues that I often talk with.

Of course as long as this administration remains in power with control of congress, chaos will rule alongside the devastation in the GOP’s wake. All global markets are uneasy. Bonds are up along with precious metals, telltale signs of nervous investors. Inflation continues to rise at home with no end in sight nor any effort by the administration to tame it and with most of the burden falling on small and medium size businesses and families. The recent jobs report was beyond dismal and with the GOP still protecting pedophilia and defending the murder of US citizens and others during their brutal and unlawful immigration roundups, Americans are restless and frustrated. Those of us who’ve seen what the GOP and Trump were up to long ago, are far past frustrated.

Any upheaval during or surrounding November’s midterms will signal a major shift in US policy, making having a relationship with the US, even more like a yo-yo than anything remotely stable. Trust in the US is gone, our treasury is being looted and there is little to no law at the top. For those who understand our nation’s true identity, this is not acceptable and we will ensure that we put a stop to it at the polls. Disruption of those polls via draconian GOP legislation or force, will light the fire of rebellion. This must be avoided if at all possible because with predators like Putin and Xi out there, a divided America looks like prey. Our national security has been so devastatingly compromised by leadership of this administration, even a stable America will take at least a generation to fully recover.

The bottom line to Putin, Trump’s and maybe Xi’s NWO is that it will require us to reestablish a trusting relationship with our allies after retaking congress in November, in order present an opponent that Putin and Xi will be wary of. There is a fragility to any such chances unless we rid our government of any vestiges of Trump era Republicans and their spineless fake-patriotism. Then the rebuilding can begin in earnest. Until then, I will be blunt, it will be a tough row to hoe, but not outside the limits of what Americans have proved they can do throughout our history. We may not have gotten things right as often as we should have, but now we have no choice but to fully immerse ourselves in this fight for our future.

Onward

Paul

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